Omar Khayyam

A link in "on this day" http://www.librarything.com/work/5382782 made me visit http://www.librarything.com/work/120890. Oh what a mess!

Yes, of course they all say they are the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam one way or the other, but if fact all those western editions are often more representative of the "translator" than the poet, and the contents vary enormously. I know for a fact, for example, that the Dutch "translator" Leopold - being a poet himself - wrote most of his from scratch.

Help is sorely needed.

I have 3 editions, including an interesting one, published in Iran, that I picked up at a book fair. It contains the Fitzgerald translation, plus 1 (or 2? - script looks different) other versions. Is one the original? Darned if I know. It is combined with the other "Omar" ones.

I once tried to separate out the Fitzgerald translation (the most well-known English one, which is pretty well acknowledged as being at best a *loose* adaptation.) But so many of the books on LT have no translator listed, and separating it out on the basis that some modern "translations" are adaptations instead, is right at the edge of Librarything separations policy anyway. So it's probably something that'll have to stay a mess until we get finer ways of classifying relationships.

I have a few editions of the FitzGerald translation of the Rubáiyát and one literal translation. I've tried to assign the books to the correct author as per the disambiguation notice, but two of the Fitzgerald's keep reverting back. How do I make the reassignment permanent?

Which books are not doing what they're told? please copy an url with the /book/ part in it, like:

http://www.librarything.com/work/120890/book/95425614

Hi Jerry

It's these two:
http://www.librarything.com/work/120890/book/95425618
http://www.librarything.com/work/120890/book/95424947

I've reassigned them both more than once, but within minutes they revert back again.

How did you try to reassign them? I don't see how you could have figured out which editions to separate.

On the edition's page you cannot identify your editions, there are a lot with titles just "Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám" or "The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám". You could (temporarily) add "(Fitzgerald)" to your editions. Now they can be separated from work 120890 and combined with work 9040086 (the Fitzgerald translation). Then you can undo the addition to the titles.

That's exactly what I did. Added a distinguishing character to the beginning of each title, separated from incorrect work, combined with correct work, verified that they were correctly combined, removed the distinguishing character, verified they were still correctly combined (they were), but when I looked again a few minutes later they had reverted to the original incorrect work.

According to the Helpers log MarthaJeanne did some separating and combining after you separated and combined your editions, but I can't imagine she undid your work. I can't think of any explanation.

Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is bound to be a disaster. There are so many versions.

Don't blame MarthaJeanne for that.

I don't.
PhaedraB did a great job on the Rubáiyát a few years ago.

Exactly.

But it is bound to remain a disaster area.

By the way: why did we revive a 6 y/o thread?

Sorry, being grumpy I guess.

>13 henkl: Thanks. I'm trying to forget how long it took.

>9 Bookwomble: I'm guessing the system just can't distinguish between two volumes with the same title, author and ISBN, and is going to resist separating them.

Are you sure you're not clicking on old urls?

I don't think I'm clicking old links. I search Your Books for 'Khayyam' and then click the title link to go to my edition. I reassigned 4 or 5 books and it's just these two that revert back. One of them is a 1945 edition, so it doesn't have an ISBN.

>17 prosfilaes: That's absolutely true. If two books have the same title, author, and ISBN (and absent an ISBN, just title and author) then to LT there are the same "edition" and will always end up in the same work.

>20 jjwilson61: But I don't think they jump after you've combined with another work.

>19 Bookwomble: However, the easiest way to fix this is to add something permanent to the end of the titles you want moved (like {Fitzgerald}

Thanks for your suggestions. I'll have to think about adding something to the title. I'm a bit OCD about having them exactly as stated on the title page! At least I now know it's not something I'm doing wrong. Thanks again :-)

It shouldn't revert back. If that is indeed what is happening, it's a bug. It should only autocombine when you first add it to LT. after that, it shouldn't jump anywhere by itself.

>23 JerryMmm: I believe that is correct. Once something has been manually separated, it shouldn't revert automatically, only if someone manually combines it.

>21 aulsmith: >23 JerryMmm: That's the way editions work. Changing the title makes it into a different edition but when you change it back it merges into the old edition again. And it's editions that are combined into works, not books.

Is it time to refresh our work on The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám? https://www.librarything.com/search.php?search=Rubaiyat+fitzgerald&searchtyp...