ŷ������

Please correct me if i am wrong.

If a foreign author only has books in a foreign language then all of the books must have the author's name in ENGLISH as a Primary author, and then FOREIGN name as a Secondary author?

Example (and the reason I am making this post):

Maxim Kantor (russian author) should have “Maxim Kantor�� as primary author on all his books and “Макси�� Кантор�� as a secondary author on all his books. Correct?

In addition there should be two identical author pages one as “Maxim Kantor�� and the other as “Макси�� Кантор��?

What about book titles?

Actually if the books have only been released with the Russian name and not the English name it should only have the Russian name.

That is what I have gathered from previous posts.

there is a comment by rivka "Then we would not add an English profile. And we never add a second name to an author profile. Certainly not in another language."

and then there is a comment by Paula "It is GR policy to maintain Author profiles in different languages, these should never be merged."

Correct, but if the author never published the books under the English Author Profile, it probably should have never been created.

i wish they would just pick one system and stick with it, the inconsistency is driving me up the wall.

thanks for your reply, i think i'll wait for a mod to chime in or something before i go editing 20+ books.

For authors who publish in multiple languages, we need to have one name be the first listed for all editions. This allows for combining them, among other benefits.

But for an author who only publishes in a single language, there is no reason the create a second author profile or add another version of their name to all their books.

so i should edit all the books listed under the english name of the author to be the russian name of the author, correct??

but if the author DOES write in english as well then he would have 2 profiles and english would be primary author and foreign as secondary author. on both language works? or just on the english ones?

my long term concern is for people who use the search function. some may use english only, even if it is a foreign book. do you know if there are plans in the work to offer "alternative spelling" kind of options, so people would land on the same author page even if they used english to search?

PS: can the 'correct' way to handle foreign authors be added to the librarian FAQ? am i asking too much or can i also ask for a pony and a puppy for xmas? :)

If the author writes solely in Russian, then any profile in another language should be merged into the Russian one.

If the author writes in English and Russian, then all editions of their work should have the English name first. Those in Russian would have the Russian name second. This is not necessary (or particularly useful) on any English editions.

While having an "also known as" option for authors is definitely something ŷ������ would like to do, it is not easy. So it is unfortunately not something that is likely to happen soon.

This is what we currently have in the Manual. /help/show/2...

Authors with books published in multiple languages should have their names dealt with similarly to those with pen names. All editions should have the primary author name as the standard or most common Roman (that is, English-language) version of the author's name. Editions published under another spelling of the name or the name in another language should have that name listed as the secondary author. Different editions of a book not having the same primary author can cause quite a few distinct problems. Please keep the primary author for all editions of a work the same.

If you would like to suggest changes/additions, we have a current thread for that: /topic/show/...

Finally There's someone here who has the same problem!
I ,too ,happen to write in both English and Arabic
So I added my first book (Arabic poetry) on goodreads
For the first couple of days i managed to write both names in one author title, this way any search would give the same result, but then things went creepy!
I added two author names in both languages for the same book.
Then i changed my author page to pure english.
I edited the second arabic name as book author to be the same as the author page
So i'm stuck now with a book that has the same author name but written twice!
Whenever i try to delete one of them ERRoR pops out beside the name
Help! :(

I'd like to know how one is supposed to find the author who has (just) had books translated to other languages? For example if I would need to add a new edition.

I know the cyrillic alphabet and can even write with them but Japanese, Arabic etc. are too difficult.

Can someone help me out? :-) I have several books by Anatoli Rybakov, like (Dutch translations of) Children of the Arbat and Heavy Sand. But someone changed the spelling of his name (as primary author, I mean) to Cyrillic script, which, to be honest, is very annoying, as now I can't even find any of his books in 'my books' when I typ 'Rybakov'... I noticed the same thing with a few other Russian authors of whom I have Dutch translations... Shouldn't the Cyrillic script be secondary for translated authors?

Other examples are the authors of De vlotreis/De keizervis : Een vertelling in verhalen (there isn't even an English spelled name there anymore) and De oude man/Het huis aan de kade. A third one seems to have been changed back to English already. I always stick to the English spelling of the author's name myself, even though the Dutch spelling might be slightly different.

I believe they are tying to the author profile. You need to request for :-
* /help/show/1...
* /topic/show/...

Booklovinglady wrote: "Can someone help me out? :-) I have several books by Anatoli Rybakov, like (Dutch translations of) Children of the Arbat and Heavy Sand. But someone changed the spelling..."

Yes some one has inappropriately changed it, I will try sort it out

Booklovinglady wrote: "Can someone help me out? :-) I have several books by Anatoli Rybakov, like (Dutch translations of) Children of the Arbat and Heavy Sand. But someone changed the spelling..."

can you give me the dutch version of the name and Ill add to the dutch versions as I am going through

Paula wrote: "Booklovinglady wrote: "Can someone help me out? :-) I have several books by Anatoli Rybakov, like (Dutch translations of) Children of the Arbat and Heavy Sand. But someo..."

The English spelling will do for the authors, it usually is (very) similar to the Dutch spelling. Translations from Cyrillic are not always the same in Dutch anyway (Dostojevski is a nice example here), as 'v' and 'w', for instance, might both be used.

I noticed Rybakov has already been changed back :-) Thanks.
The other two authors can be found by the links of the Dutch titles I've given ( and )

Booklovinglady wrote: "I noticed Rybakov has already been changed back :-) Thanks. "

The other two authors, Viktor Astafyev and Yury Trifonov, can be found through the links of the Dutch titles I've given in message 11, as I noticed the names of these last two are still in Cyrilic script, in spite of translations being available?

I have a problem.
There's an autor Вера Камша and it's the same author as Wiera Kamsza (and there are two books that were translated to Polish). How to combine them into one profile?

Fyrrea wrote: "I have a problem.
There's an autor Вера Камша and it's the same author as Wiera Kamsza (and there are two books that were translated to Polish). How to combine th..."

Seems to be more or less related to my problem.... I think there might be some 'problems' solving the 'problem' :-) Mine is still there, anyway, which is a bit odd, as normally the GR superlibrarians are very quick in responding/solving a problem.

Fyrrea wrote: "I have a problem.
There's an autor Вера Камша and it's the same author as Wiera Kamsza (and there are two books that were translated to Polish). How to combine th..."

We do not combine different language profiles, a hyperlink can be added to each profile to link them.

Where books have been translated from the original language in to a Roman language we use the Roman language in the primary author position then add the other language edition as the secondary author. this allows for all editions of a book to be combined. The primary author should be the same on all editions

/help/show/2...

Booklovinglady wrote: "Fyrrea wrote: "I have a problem.
There's an autor Вера Камша and it's the same author as Wiera Kamsza (and there are two books that were translated to Polish). Ho..."

it takes a lot of work to fix where profiles have been merged - the ones I have not yet done are on my to do list

Paula wrote: "it takes a lot of work to fix where profiles have been merged - the ones I have not yet done are on my to do list..."

No offense, I just thought it a bit odd, as my question was posted nine days ago. I have had similar problems in the past and they have always been solved (very) quickly by one of the superlibrarians. That's all.

none taken, it just takes some time to sort out correctly and better to do one author in one go rather than piece meal, at least for me anyway

Paula wrote: " do not combine different language profiles, a hyperlink can be added to each profile to link them."

OK, thank you :) Glad I asked before I did something! :)

/book/show/8...

I tried twice to add the Dutch spelling of his name (Nikolaj instead of Nikolai) as a secondary author, but it wasn't processed. Granted, not much difference beween an i and a j, but it's according to the rules, right?

The system won't allow you to directly add a second author if it's too similar to the first one. So the workaround is to add a fake temporary name (I'm partial to temptemp, but anything you are sure doesn't already have an existing author profile should work) to each book you want the second author on. Then merge the fake name with the desired name.

Thank you, it worked brilliantly :)

...I see there are several books with only Nikolaj Gogol listed as an author. Do they need the same workaround in order to be listed under the default spelling as well? (Sorry for all my questions)

ETA Never mind, of course they do. Have added the default spelling to these records.

Before I mess it up, I want to make sure I understand this correctly.

All of the books under Tomás de Kempis should be edited so that Thomas à Kempis is the primary author, retaining the Spanish profile as the secondary author. Then merge editions, but don't merge profiles.

If that is indeed right, do we have any cool tools or shortcuts for this which I may have missed? Anyone developed any nifty tricks? I imagine this will be mildly tedious by hand, especially combing through 345 editions of The Imitation of Christ looking for "de Kem".

Keith wrote: "Before I mess it up, I want to make sure I understand this correctly.

All of the books under Tomás de Kempis should be edited so that Thomas à Kempis is the primar..."

if by 'merge editions' you mean 'combine editions', then yes. unless there are a bunch of ISBN-less duplicates under Thomas??? because all the ones under Tomas look like they have ISBNs or ASINs.

I don't know any shortcuts. But unless I'm missing the boat, this looks fairly straightforward...

Keith wrote: "All of the books under Tomás de Kempis should be edited so that Thomas à Kempis is the primary author, retaining the Spanish profile as the secondary author."

Since Thomas à Kempis appears to be the accepted spelling for English-language books, correct. But editions will get combined, NOT merged.

Sadly, there are no tricks I know of for this. Although you may have to use the temporary author name workaround, because the two names are so similar.

Yes, sorry, I meant combine not merge. Thanks for the confirmation. I guess I have a project. :-/ Hrm, unless someone beat me to it.... This looks different than I remember from last week. -shrug- Back to work.

/author/show...

At some point George Konrád's author profile was updated to read György Konrád, with the effect that many of his books now list György Konrád twice.

According to GR rules, the English spelling should be used for the primary name if the author has books in translation. If the author profile is changed back again, will it only affect the primary listing of his name, or will both names change to the English spelling?

lethe wrote: "/author/show...

At some point George Konrád's author profile was updated to read György Konrád, with the effect that many of his books now list György Ko..."

Both will change. You can see they have the same author number = the same author profile.

Argh. What to do, what to do. It is very annoying, because the rest of the world spells his name György, only the English spelling is different.

lethe wrote: "According to GR rules, the English spelling should be used for the primary name if the author has books in translation..."

I've been on GR for some years now and have always followed this rule, which doesn't seem all that hard to follow, really.

However, over a month ago I noticed books by three Russian authors no longer had Enlgish spelling as a primary name (see my earlier messages 11, 15, 16, 18 and 21). I've read the books by Anatoli Rybakov, Viktor Astafyev and Yury Trifonov in a translation, which is why I think that, according to GR rules, the primary author's name should be spelled in English, not in Cyrillic (as it was before someone changed the spelling from English to Cyrillic). But only Anatoli Rybakov has been changed back to English spelling for the primary author so far...

Please, can someone do something about this and change the two other names mentioned back to English spelling as well? Thanks!

31-33: I have fixed George Konrád aka György Konrád according to ŷ������ policy, and added a librarian note to both profiles.

#35 Great, thanks so much!

34: fixed Viktor Astafiev (used this spelling since it's the one on the cover of the English editions present on GR). Added Viktor Astafjev as secondary author for the Dutch editions.
I'll be back later for Yury Trifonov, unless someone beats me to it.

Koenraad wrote: "34: fixed Viktor Astafiev (used this spelling since it's the one on the cover of the English editions present on GR). Added Viktor Astafjev as secondary author for the Dutch edit..."

Thanks!! Don't bother about adding the Dutch spelling too. As long as the English spelling is the primary author, I'm happy :-)

34: Yury Trifonov is also done.

Leopoldo Alas "Clarín" used to have two author profiles, one for his pen name Clarín and one for his real name Leopoldo Alas. They have both been changed into one mix of the two.

I can understand the reasoning when the original name is in a different alphabet, but what's the rationale for anglicizing names that are perfectly easy for English-speaking people to read?

For example, if a writer's name is María, must she be cited as Maria just because some of her work has been translated into English (and sometimes may be credited with the accent even in the translated editions)?

How do you determine what counts as the "English translation" of a NAME? Is it just how that author's name is usually written on English translations?

I'm struggling with Japanese authors at the moment. I think I saw one author having 3 author pages.... People mess up even first and last names. Also, Asian languages don't always put spaces between words. What should I do?

Alternate spellings/also known as is a feature GR badly needs.

/search?utf8...
In order to combine these, I added GGM in Roman script as primary author to the Hebrew edition, but it refuses to show up in the combine list and a separate profile has been created:
/author/show...
when it should have been here:
/author/show...

1) What did I do wrong?*
2) I added GGM's name in Hebrew to the latter profile, but I can't get rid of the return because my @#%^* iPad only has backspace. Would someone please remove the return?

*I'd really like to know, because I saw several books on his Hebrew profile that need his name added in Roman script.

Thanks in advance!

lethe wrote: "1) What did I do wrong?*
2) I added GGM's name in Hebrew to the latter profile, but I can't get rid of the return because my @#%^* iPad only has backspace. Would someone please remove the return?"

Removed the return.
About the duplicate profile, I merged it into the correct profile. Might be because of the accented letters not recognized as the same (also accented) letters.

There are at least two ways to do an accented character, so sometimes names that seem to match, don't quite.

Copy-paste helps with most such.

#44-45 Thanks! I copy-pasted from Wikipedia, maybe they use a different method.

#43-45 Huzzah! It finally worked. Alas, not before creating yet another profile: /author/show...

Or will it disappear automatically, because it's empty now?

It will.

A trick I sometimes use to ensure that the author name is canonical for GR—especially where there may be unusual numbers of spaces or special characters—is to edit the author profile that I know I want and copy from the Name field there into whatever page I'm really editing. Then I close the tab for the author profile before I have a chance to apply any mistaken edits. Because of the spacing conventions, copying even from the regular author profile page is often insufficient, and both WorldCat and Wikipedia often give an unhelpful result.

Thanks, that is a good tip.