Language of works

This may also have been mentioned before. I do not understand the rule which determines the language in which the title of a work is displayed. Two possible rules that would make sense to me:

1. Always display the work's title in it's original language.
2. Always display the work's title in the language of the site (i.e. English for Librarything.com, French for Librarything.fr etc.)

It seems to be 2, but only if it is available in that language and it was not entered manually but imported form a library or Amazone.

It doesn't have to bee imported from Amazon. I haven't imported any of my books from Amazon and the titles is shown in Swedish anyway.

I had a note of a book that behaved like I described, either I was mistaken or it doesn't do it any more.

It's democratic, that's all. It's just whatever title has the most copies owned. Except it's somewhat weighted in favor of library sources over Amazon sources.

Not completely: this one http://www.librarything.de/work-info/2452200 shows the German minority title on a German page, and the English majority title when embedded in another language.

I'd prefer rule 1, but it seems that it is the majority of registered books that determines the display language. E.g., if the majority of books "Much Ado About Nothing" are German translations, the work will be displayed as "Viel Lärmen um nichts"...

Let me explain from scratch:

*For each book, it figures out a title for every language it can.
*For each language it uses the most popular title, but favors library-data titles over Amazon titles.
*For every book it also figures out a "default title." This is the English title, unless there is no English title, in which case it is the title of the original, if it knows it, failing to the most popular overall.

Then:

1. If on English site, it displays the default title, English or no.
2. If on non-English site, it displays the name in that language, if it can. If not, the default title.

So, for example:

The time traveler's wife

1. librarything.com: The time traveler's wife — top library title (you can tell because libraries don't capitalize every word)
2. librarything.nl: De vrouw van de tijdreiziger — top Dutch title
3. cym.librarything.com: The time traveler's wife — default title, there being no Dutch translation

Two factors limit the effectiveness of the system. First, the language data isn't that good. The MARC data is often wrong, or the 008 field is misformatted, so it can't figure out the language. When there is no MARC data, it uses ISBNs. But ISNBs are fundamentally about the country or langauge of the publisher, not the book itself.

I've added a feature to show the original title of a work on work pages, when you're not already on that language, so:

http://www.librarything.com/work/168783
Chess story
by Stefan Zweig; original title: Schachnovelle.

http://www.librarything.fr/work/168783
Le Joueur d'échecs
par Stefan Zweig; original title: Schachnovelle.

http://www.librarything.de/work/168783
Schachnovelle.
von Stefan Zweig

It only works on the .com site now, so you don't get the English titles of English books on the German site.

I just heard many Combiners shout Thank you!. Or it was the voices in my head...either way, thanks!

Please note, however, that there is a lot of wrongness in the language data, particularly in retranslations. I expect that this will trigger a series of angry bug reports, as this or that book shows up with a French original title when the real original is in Arabic or whatever.

Here's a choice one:

The Bhagavad Gita
original title: Interactive Bhagavad-gita As It Is (CD-Rom Edition)

Or:

The Aeneid
original title: Vergil's Aeneid

Tao Te Ching
original title: Tao Te Ching : A Bilingual Edition

I think this feature is gonna go... Maybe I should restrict it to a few common European languages, where it's more likely to work.

Oh well, it was a good try. Cheerio and all that!

I was about to say what a great idea, but then I read further . . .

> 12

Oh, my. I'm sure some would take that as evidence of extraterrestrial visitations. After all, such advanced technology could only have come from outer space.

;-))

Tim,

I notice that the original title is showing on the Social Informaton page, but not the Book Information page! If you are going to keep this (and I hope you will, once the bugs are exterminated), please put it on the Book page, too. Frankly, that's where it's most valuable. That's certainly the page I go to most, especially if I'm looking for cataloguing information.

Oh, and consider this another request for the "go to work" link on the "combine/separate" books page to go to the Book info page, rather than the Social info page. 'Twould be much easier on combiners/separators!

Thanks. Actually, I'm going to pass on this. We're going to rip all those pages apart and put them back in a different order soon, and I don't want to sink time in now--the feature exists for when we move to better spaces.

I hope you don't just get rid of it for now. Even though some of the information is wrong, the part that's right is still useful.

No, I won't, but the various work pages have slightly different code going on—and it's just a hassle. This floor needs ripping out and rebuilding, not polishing.

Thanks for looking into this, Tim!

I sincerely hope this means that there will be a dedicated, editable field for the original title on the Edit page. Luckily library databases mostly can deliver the original title, but sometimes it is missing or you have to add the whole book manually. I would also love to search and sort my catalogue by original title and show it in the views.

It seems to me that the rule that the title used on the English site is the English title if there is one is a terrible idea. It misrepresents what book one has and in some cases may make it difficult even to identify it. I don't see why one would ever want a translation of the title rather than the actual title, but if there are uses for such a feature, surely it shouldn't be the default. Shouldn't the default be to display the real title of the work?

23>I don't see why one would ever want a translation of the title rather than the actual title.

Um. If you don't read the original language?

Also, did you see message 8?

>23 billposer:

Right. This applies on the global level, not on your data. If you have the book, you'll see your title (whether it's in a different language or just an alternate title). It gets a little tricky what the header of the page is. (Basically, if you checked from your catalog, it's the book title, but other ways may produce the word title. But no matter what you'll see that blue box with your title in it.)

Anyway, I don't want to see 2,000 users go crazy over ??s on their copy of Gilgamesh....

"Free font for Sumeric with your lifetime membership at LT!"
;-D