Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

Some of the books were not entered in the language that they were published. For example: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/73...

The book itself was the Chinese Edition of Michael Grejniec's "A Que Sabe La Luna?". The current title really isn't in any real language. It's just simply how the Chinese title could be pronounced. The same goes with the publisher information.

For books of this type, could all the information be changed into Chinese? How about the author's name. Usually there would be a different spelling in Chinese for the name too, like "麦克·格雷涅茨（Michael Gregniec）". Would this format be more preferable, as it would help with search in both languages?

eastsidewest wrote: "The current title really isn't in any real language."

Actually, it's my understanding that there is an official transliteration of Chinese characters into Latin characters. Pinyin, yes?

However, for books like this, the title can be changed from the transliteration to the actual translation, because the GR website (unlike some) is capable of storing Chinese characters in its fields. The same can be done for the publisher.

Also, the "(Chinese edition)" in the title should be removed and the language field set to Chinese.

For the author, the primary author should be the author's name in English (usually) or in the primary language of the author (if there are few or no English translations). This is because all editions of a book should have the exact same primary author -- it's necessary for combining the editions and it's helpful in other ways as well. However, the translated author name can be put as a secondary author: so, in this case, "Michael Grejniec" would be the primary author and "麦克·格雷涅茨" would be the secondary author. The format "麦克·格雷涅茨（Michael Gregniec）" should not be used. Additionally, if it hasn't already been done, the Michael Grejniec and 麦克·格雷涅茨 author profiles should have links to each other in the author bios.

(There is an "author aka" feature in the works which will allow various translations of author names to be linked together automatically, but it's going to be a long time before it's available.)

"The current title really isn't in any real language."

This also happens with Greek books listed on Amazon or other sites/databases. The titles and authors appear in Latin characters, what is commonly known as "Greeklish". Example http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/79...

Greeklish is commonly used in informal correspondence (email, text messages, etc) & for posting in online forums. Is this the case with the Chinese transliteration?

Alright, I'm having some issues on what is right and wrong. Such as this: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/85...

I was the original one who added the second book to the system under the title "Olimpos" and took my facts from reliable sources and edited to the details I found. But since then someone has changed it to オリンポス (to me this are just a bunch of squares, so I don't know if I got it right).

My issue is should the Japanese title remain or go to the original title box. I know for a fact that them being in Japanese make it much more difficult to search for the books I'm after...

Does the ISBN of that edition belong to a Japanese edition or a English edition.

If the ISBN is a Japanese then the book details should be in Japanese, if English then in English.

If the book was first published in Japanese then the Original title should be in apanese, if English then in English.

If never published / translated in one of the languages then it should be in the language it was published in (Sorry for the essay)