Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

I have come across a number of titles not in English that have been posted in this format:

"Non-English Title=English Title"

Example:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25...

I realise this looks sloppy and is not in keeping with standard formatting. I am tempted to change them (remove the "=English title"), but I have hesitations. I have a little concern about losing a tiny bit of data that someone might find helpful.

The book above, for example, is the only version of this title existing in the entire database. If an English reader were searching for The Ring is Closed (a not un-heard of work to someone interested in this author), they would find this. I can imagine they might rather find this than nothing. It also would alert an English reader looking at an author page that there is indeed another book out there by that author they may not have known about before (I take the position that GR's is likely used for things like finding an author's bibliography, not just cataloguing one's personal library/reading history). As it is now, this would give them an English title to go scouting for. Removing the information would "erase" the title's existence from the English-reading GR's world. Do we care about this?

So far it seems that I have seen this formatting only on titles that are out of print, so adding a record for the English title with little to no information available to me and combining it with the non-English title doesn't strike me as the best solution (or should I just wait and hope someone comes along someday who has the book in-hand and can add it themselves?). Additionally, if I am going to make a "dummy placeholder" for an English edition, then does it make sense to also make a record for the book with the title in the language in which it was originally published? (I haven't looked yet, but I have a hunch this particular title is still in print in Norway so I might be able to get some publication information on it from 4,500 miles away...)

Thoughts, concerns, philosophical disputes, etc?

I would change the = to parentheses, but otherwise leave them alone. I dislike the notion of a dummy placeholder.

I don't like the idea of dummy placeholders either, I think they would someday simply turn into dupes.

What would you say would be the minimum amount of information preferred to add a new record for the English title, for the purposes of associating it with the non-English edition? For example, I can find a publisher and binding, but no publication date, ISBN (since it pre-dates), translator, etc.

Thanks~

I think a publication date would be part of an absolute minimum.

The trouble is that things in the description field are not searchable or viewable on summary/list pages, as Brixton noted above.

I definitely don't like the concept of a dummy entry because I have seen the use of "=" in titles to mean "Non-English Title = Literal Translation of Title into English", with doesn't mean that there's a book with that literal translation as a title: sometimes there's a book in English under a different title and sometimes there's no translation of the book at all.

Good point.

Re: Cait

Whatever is consensed upon, I would only alter something I know a) has an English translation; and b) gives the correct English title as published. I have so far only seen this formatting with titles that meet both criteria, so adding a record of an existing English book (if, so far as suggested by rivka, publisher and publication date can be found), eliminating "=English Title" from the "Non-English Title=English Title" record, then combining the two, seems like it should be an ok way to go?

My imagination is limited as to anyone's purpose for adding "=literal translation title" except perhaps in cases of titles written in non-Latin alphabets. Since I am not qualified in any such language, I will certainly leave such things alone.

Is it a correct procedure to translate a book title like this one?

Vivir adrede/ To Live Purposely

David wrote: "Is it a correct procedure to translate a book title like this one?

Vivir adrede/ To Live Purposely"

This format is the most common one that I see. Except there is a space before the slash.

I know we talked abit about this in the Librarian Manual Instructions that Isis is building...

The problem with a "Title / Translation" format for titles is that we also use a "Book 1 / Book 2" format for omnibus collections that don't have a new title for the collection.

Kathrynn wrote: (...)
Vivir adrede/ To Live Purposely

This format is the most common one that I see. Except there is a s..."

Thank you Kathrynn.

What I meant was: what is the point of such a thing?

If this book had an english version, there's no use in translating the title in the original spanish one.

If, as it seems the case, it hasn't, to whom would interest the english title iF you can't read spanish; 'cause if one can, one can read the original spanish title. :)

Sorry, but this seems a little nonsense to me.

plus: why only the english title and not, say: french, german, portuguese .... :)

Because this site is primarily an English-language site.

I think it would be better to have translated titles in parentheses than separated with a slash.

rivka wrote: "Because this site is primarily an English-language site.

I think it would be better to have translated titles in parentheses than separated with a slash."

rivka, please don't take my comment as a xenophobic wit.

My point is: either if one can or cannot read spanish, the translated title is useless.

And, well, the title of a book is the title of the book and I think that should not be changed.

Blherc! My english is terrible; was my view about this clear enough?

rivka wrote: "Because this site is primarily an English-language site.

I think it would be better to have translated titles in parentheses than separated with a slash."

Agreed.

The translated title is useful because the bulk of the user base, the bulk of the librarians, and the entire GR staff are English speaking. And it's easier to combine books when you don't have to seek out someone who speaks the language in question.

mlady_rebecca wrote: "And it's easier to combine books when you don't have to seek out someone who speaks the language in question. "

Well mlady_rebecca, that doesn't seem to me the correct approach at all.

I think that, for the "combining job", not only we "have to seek someone who speaks the language" but also someone who knows the author and the book in cause.

To trust in a title translated by, god knows who, doesn't seem to me correct in any way you may put it.

That's my view and sorry if I may sound too harsh. I'm not. :)

Cheers
David

If the primary purpose of including the title in English is for combining, then it's (mostly) better to use the Librarian note rather than change the actual title. This keeps the title neat, but still retains the information on the combine page (the primary negative is that librarian notes are not included in the "filter", but I don't think this is too big a deal).

Mostly I put English titles in where the book has been translated from English; it's not hard to find the English title in places like Wikipedia and add it. And no, I don't want to have to click through for librarian notes every time I'm checking a book's been combined correctly. Too much unnecessary work.

rivka wrote: "Because this site is primarily an English-language site.

I think it would be better to have translated titles in parentheses than separated with a slash."

so is there an agreement between slashes/ and parentheses? (I admit to personally preferring parantheses, but obviously, I'll go along with whatever is decided.)

(I prefer parentheses too.)

Is there a consensus / manual for non-English titles (non-Latin script) without a translation?

I remember reading in a post (which I can no longer find) that the common practice is to enter the title in the native script. I'd added a few Malayalam language titles accordingly. I found that many of those titles were edited to change the title to such a format: |

e.g. http://www.goodreads.com/book/edits/7...

Is this an accepted practice now?

(I personally don't prefer changing the title to include meta information)

While there is no reason for a book's title to include the translation, including the transliteration (as the example you linked does), seems like a good idea.

However, there does seem to be something odd going on with series information.

Hey, thanks for your reply.

Oh okay.I've been away for a while; Is this the preferred way to store the transliterated title as things are right now? I mean, as opposed to adding it as metadata.

I have no idea what you mean by "adding it as metadata". If it is in the title field, it will be searchable; if it is not, it will not be.

What I meant by metadata is some other field, which would better suit this purpose (transliterated title) rather than including this in the title (where it doesn't belong) - which is a 'hacky' way of doing it.

But if has to be in the title to be searchable, then there's no choice here for the time being, I guess. I'll keep an eye out for a specialized field for this.

Thanks for your reply.

There are no plans to add any additional fields to the book/show or book/edit pages any time soon. Certainly not one that would only apply to a very small percentage of books.

I just don't like parenthesis because they are also used for series and that can be confusing.

I kind of agree that if the only reason for the English title is for Librarians combining, etc this can be done in the librarian notes and we can keep the titles as the books name with no added stuff.

Sorry if I'm late to the convo.

For transliterated titles I use square brackets so that they won't be confused with series parentheses although I do think the pipe character in your example, Asif, also looks nice and has a clear meaning. It is my understanding that the first version of the title should be in the script used by the edition and the second version should be that title transliterated into the roman alphabet -- does anyone else have thoughts on this?

Example: 極楽　青春ホッケー部 1 [Gokuraku Seishun Hokkēbu 1].

Asif wrote: "What I meant by metadata is some other field, which would better suit this purpose (transliterated title) rather than including this in the title (where it doesn't belong) - which is a 'hacky' way of doing it."

Transliterations are not so much metadata as the exact same title twice (just in different scripts), so I personally don't get itchy-librarian syndrome having them in the title field.

I definitely agree that translations don't belong in the title, especially since the translations I've seen in titles are generally literal translations of the title words into English rather than the title as published by an English-language publisher, which seems both useless and misleading!

Cait wrote: "It is my understanding that the first version of the title should be in the script used by the edition and the second version should be that title transliterated into the roman alphabet -- does anyone else have thoughts on this?"

First assuming left-to-right languages? ;)

I put it to the left, even when dealing with Hebrew or other right-to-left languages (where "first" is less simple to define).

I like the square brackets over parenthesis, maybe I will start using that (unless we have defined a sure method that will be the new rule).

rivka wrote: "First assuming left-to-right languages? ;)"

Hah, yes. My American was showing there, whoops.

In 2009, I apparently preferred parentheses. At some point, I noticed that most people were using slashes and switched.

Now you want me to switch to brackets? Aw, man . . .

(I think it may be more in line with common practice on sites like WorldCat.)

I think it is very distinct as NOT the title or a series name. Slashes can be confused with other things.

Agreed. I have been using slashes to indicate multiple book titles. Like these

Maybe we need to update the title formatting section of the manual.