Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

Ok I have no idea what to do here. There is a lot of classical literature that has obviously been reissued on nook, kindle and I don't know what else. And those books are bulgarian but they are spelled with Latin Alphabet while it has to be Cyrrilic. I've started adding the correct title in parentheses, but I still think this is wrong. That is not something a Bulgarian publishing house will do, but those ISBNs lead to ABEBOOKS and the names there are in the latin alphabet. So what do I do?

It's almost all of those books:
http://www.goodreads.com/search?utf8=...

And there are some more on the different author pages.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15...
Literaturno Obrazovanie I Interpretatsiia Na Khudozhestven Tekst V Uchilishte

http://www.abebooks.co.uk/97895481640...

But it should be Литературно образование .... and etc. as in here:
http://www.worldcat.org/title/literat...

The ABE default editions are frequently taken from the same source as the Roman alphabet ones on here too... If this was a standard non-Roman book, I now usually put the title in the original alphabet, and then [] around the standardised transliteration of the title, so that it shows up regardless of the alphabet the searcher uses. With these I would be inclined to do the same BUT I am not confident that that is accepted practice without seeing the item itself physically.

Emy wrote: "The ABE default editions are frequently taken from the same source as the Roman alphabet ones on here too... If this was a standard non-Roman book, I now usually put the title in the original alpha..."

EMY THANK You for responding.

Hopefully someone else will weight on this as well.

I don't mind keeping the Roman version of the name but I do not think it should be listed as the first Title, but in parenthesis , because no one will search like that the books, no on will type them like this. There are way too much interpretations of spelling with latin letters. They can't all be listed. Can they?

Phisicaly I guarantee you it is not gonna be like that. I will translate as much as I can the title from the example which is a Teachers Edition for teaching high school kids literature: Literature Education and Interpretation of fictional text in school. Now trust me as stupid as it sounds it is even more stupid when you read it but our official alphabet is not the ROMAN one and no teacher will use it!

http://books.google.co.uk/books/about...

This has been written 1994! I was in 3rd grade. This is 5 years after the falling of communist regime. English was barely part of the educational system, and certainly not yet obligatory. There was no English signs on the streets at that time.

Publication date: 1996 - http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Pod-I...


http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ivan-...
There are question marks in the title?

Anyway I'm off to sleep. Will check out tomorrow for any other advice you guys have for me how to deal with this.

Thank you so much all.

XOXO

Well I have to check but there is a strict rule of transliterating other aplhabets to Latin, adopted by Goodreads, so you just have to follow it.
I don't know why guidelines for e-books should be different from those for paper editions? If we don't add any Latin spelling of the book name if it is published only in Bulgarian, then why should we do it for e-books? Does it have something to do with the ISBN? I'm not familiar with the system, least to say with this ABE... thing, sorry :)

I transliterate, not translate, and use the Library of Congress system without diacritics. E.g.:

Литературно образование [Literaturno obrazovanie]

When you see ? in the titles like that, it's usually the remainders of diacritics. Diacritics were/are used by the LC and other libraries on non-Western scripts titles when they couldn't put the other alphabets onto records for whatever reasons. Usually they show linked letters, e.g. я being ia was shown with a line above to link the two letters.

Nousha wrote: "there is a strict rule of transliterating other aplhabets to Latin"

There is? For titles?

she means which letters are used for what sound I believe. That is for official purposes, like passport names, but those rules are changing ssometimes
for instant the sound ц, can be c, ts, tz and probably more variations.

Anyway I have no idea where that rule is and can we at least include the original name. Btw Nousha thanks for coming here.

There has never been any discussion that I recall regarding transliteration rules. Most transliterated titles on Goodreads come from imports or users, and I doubt there is much consistency in terms of transliteration rules.

There would need to be an agreed-upon set for each language, and some have competing "official" guidelines. I know Hebrew does, and that's one of the only languages I would be comfortable adding/editing a transliterated title without an outside source.

I'm guessing the information for these books has been created either from the publisher or user that had no idea about the alphabet issue here.

Is it O.K. to change the title to the original language for old paperbacks (no transliteration, or keep in parentheses) and keep it for nook editions maybe? What do you think I should do, Rivka.

Question: I see some kindle editions have ISBN AND ASIN numbers, do we create two editions?

I will check where the suggestion of using the [] in the title came from as I thought it was you Rivka and now I'm worried! :)

With regards to systems - I either use what is on WorldCat or I transliterate Cyrillic, which is the one I am confident in.

Emy wrote: "I will check where the suggestion of using the [] in the title came from as I thought it was you Rivka and now I'm worried! :)"

I think the [] was just an idea that was picked up by lots of libraraians because it makes the book searchable in it's latin and non-latin alphabet, it's never been official but I think it's useful to have both. I know for Japanese mangas there are many users who read fan translations and may know the romanized name but not have the knowledge (or ability) to type in the original Japanese name.

I add the transliterated title to Japanese titles often, but I usually go by what is listed on WorldCat as they usually have both the Japanese and romanized titles listed.

Yes, there are strict rules for transliterating Cyrillic (Bulgarian) letters into Latin, publushed in the Official State Gazette with a special law:
http://bg.wikisource.org/wiki/%D0%97%...
So it should be easy to achieve some consistency, shouldn't it?

Awesome *bookmarking*

(I may have written a ranty MA essay some time ago about the problems of book cataloguing and transliteration! :P)

Vicky wrote: "I think the [] was just an idea that was picked up by lots of librarians because it makes the book searchable in it's latin and non-latin alphabet, it's never been official but I think it's useful to have both."

We also use () and / for other things, so it's a way to keep them distinct. There no reason to completely remove a transliterated title, but adding the original language version in addition is good, when that is possible.

Guys, thanks for the help.