User talk:Anniemod/Archive1

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This is an Archive page. Please do not post here -- post in my main talk page instead.

Астронавти

Hello, I've approved your submission for this title but made a few changes to conform to our standards: 1) the author's name is (to this day) to be left in its transliterated form so I reverted it to "Stanislaw Lem", 2) the currency code (or symbol) should be placed before the amount (see here), I've also changed "лв " to "Lev", 3) information about the translator should principaly go at title level so I've duplicated it, 4) the essay Станислав Лем (биографични бележки) must be credited to (simply) "uncredited" (see here for exceptions to this rule) and it'll be nice to add its transliterated form. As it seems that you own the book, it will be interesting that you become its "Primary Verifier" (use the "Verify This Pub" link), this will indicate to other users that the data has been physically checked by one contributor and which one (in this case, you'll also be able to precise its binding/format (see here)) and eventually add a cover scan. The result is here. Thanks for contributing. Hauck 13:16, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Sorry about the mistakes - I will add the transliterated form for the essay. I read a few things but apparently missed how to do some of the things. I do not have the book in front of me - it is back in Bulgaria - I just had the data for it on a key card so fixed the record. If/when I get to the book again or get someone to pull it and look up the rest for me, I will Verify it as well anniemod 18:27, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
No problem, it's not that easy to make your first submission. Carry on, we're eager to welcome new contributors particularly on geographical area where our covering is scarce. Hauck 19:55, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
Would have been more useful if I had done that before I moved to the States (minus my books) :) Although I saw a couple of other areas where I have the books here and they are not verified and completed in the site. anniemod 20:44, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Transliteration of "ъ"

Hi, and welcome! I have a question for you about transliteration of ъ as used in Bulgarian. I noticed in Време във времето you gave a single transliteration, using "a" -- "vav" -- but in Буквите Пъблишинг, you left the "'" transliteration and added two others, using both "a" and "u". This seems inconsistent to me. Also, I believe the standard transliteration of what I know as the Russian hard sign, ъ, is " (and soft sign,ь, is '), but I learned that in my Russian classes long ago. I do not know if this extends to Bulgarian, but I did find this page, and it seems to support my memory. I guess I am trying to ask if the transliterations using "a" and "u" are correct and, if so, whether additional ones should be given for във. Thanks, and thank you for contributing. --MartyD 01:23, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Hello. The official Bulgarian rule is that ъ is transliterated as 'a'( and here is the current law that says so: [1] :) I know it is in Bulgarian but the table in the middle and the examples should be pretty obvious (and Wiki even have a handy comparison table: link which also leads to the UN system: link and here it is in English link. People tend to disagree a lot but I prefer to use the official country rules. The ' was already there - I hate removing content added by someone else so I left it there for now... The case of Буквите Пъблишинг is special in another way as well-- because Пъблишинг is a transliteration in Bulgarian of the English word so when it gets transliterated back it can either go the standard way (so 'a' or go back to its original "u"). If one of them need to go, I would remove the "'" spelling (it is Russian, not Bulgarian) but both 'a' and 'u' are valid here. Now - if I had it my way, I would be using "y" actually (that is how I learned to type once upon a time) but that is not a real option anymore (ъ and й can never stand in the same position so using the same letter for both would not have caused the issues that using 'a' but as it is the standard rule, I stick to it. Most names will also follow these rules (personal names) unless if someone specially requested the old French spelling or another spelling. anniemod 01:44, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
Title В телата си разпръснати върнете се is another where "a" was used, and its corresponding Publication В телата си разпръснати върнете се uses "a" and "ŭ". --MartyD 01:35, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
Same for the "ŭ" as for the "'". I hate destroying people's work so I left it there and added the proper one. anniemod 01:44, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

(after edit conflict)

Unfortunately, modern Slavic languages use a number of Cyrillic letters differently. The Bulgarian version of "ъ" has a long and complicated history, e.g. see this Wikipedia article about "Yus". Modern transliteration systems use ″, ǎ, ŭ, u, or a, presumably just to make bibliographers' lives more interesting :) Ahasuerus 01:50, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
Tell me about it - my legal name was written one way in Latin script when I was a child (and had my first passport which I never used at the end) and in a different way when I actually needed a passport to travel (I do not have ъ in the name but I do have Й :). Which is why I tend to do what the the current official rules are - like them or not, these are the rules. If another decision is taken here, I am fine with it as well. This is why I stopped today with most of the titles with "ъ" still to finish.anniemod 01:57, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
Following official rules is certainly the correct approach! And I know well that multiple acceptable transliterations are possible. Thank you for answering my questions. --MartyD 02:07, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for asking :) I had been trying to thread very lightly and not to do things that make no sense. Transliteration is always a funny topic. I wonder if I should put a transliteration guide for Bulgarian somewhere that can be referenced... (on the other hand there does not seem to be too many Bulgarian speakers that frequent these shores. anniemod 16:11, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
P.S. As Hauck mentioned earlier, our software still requires that author names should be entered using Latin transliterations. All other record typess (publications, titles, publishers, etc) have already been changed to support both the native version and the transliterated version(s), but authors remain outstanding. I hope to make the necessary software changes in the next 4-6 weeks, so if you have a non-trivial number of Cyrillic books that you plan to enter, you may want to wait until then. Thanks again for contributing! Ahasuerus 01:50, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
I am kinda used to it - the fact that anything is writable in Bulgarian is a nice surprise as it is. Unfortunately I am not in Bulgaria anymore so most of my Bulgarian edits will be just edits - most of the books I actually have here are in English. So no hurry - I will get to the BG ones during a vacation when I am there but won't be soon. anniemod 01:57, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Абсурдистан

Hello, I've approved your submission for this pub but can you please transliterate the artist's name? Thanks. Hauck 19:54, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

What is the current policy in such cases? Add a transliterated name only? Add the actual name in brackets? Something else? And talking about that - the name of the author on the book itself is spelled in Bulgarian. I know that we cannot put it like that but where can I put the Bulgarian name? Anniemod 20:00, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
The name of the artist must be in roman (?) at title and publication level. The "real" name should go here at author level (I've added it).
Transliteration added. I could not do it before because there was no page for that artist yet so I could not get to the page to add transliteration (or is there a trick to allow me to before the addition is approved? Anniemod 20:01, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
No trick alas. The "real" name may only be added after the first submission is accepted. Hauck 20:28, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
Thought so. And thanks for fixing the one above (though it needs fixing (you added the illustrator name and not the author name there - sorry if I confused you. Anniemod 22:18, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

The Life of Elves

Hello, I've approved your submission for this pub. I've just changed the artist's to simply Donald Iain Smith (Getty is likely only the agency) and deleted the credit to the designer that was already present. Hauck 10:22, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll remember for next time. I looked at it, decided to leave it at the end (as it is on the copyright page) - easier to be removed if not needed than to have a non-complete record if it needed to stay there. Anniemod 11:41, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Вокруг света № 11

Hi. I am going to accept your changes to Vokrug Sveta and its title, but I am going to insert the month into both. I found this, which shows the Ноябрь on the cover. As a rule, we want the month and year in the entry, especially if present on (or in) the magazine. The issue number is used when some or all of the date is missing. See the Magazines and Missing or variant dates bullets of Help:Screen:EditPub#Title. The help does not anticipate non-English months, but I think it will work out fine. The series grid should end up showing "№ 11, Ноябрь" in the Nov column of the 1972 row. (We will see!). --MartyD 00:35, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

It looks like it worked. :-) I added Noyabr' as the transliteration of Ноябрь. If that is not best, or if there should be other ones, please let me know or submit corrections. Thanks. --MartyD 00:41, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
Sorry about that. Will remember to always add the month - the usual citation for the magazine goes only with year and number (no month) and my mind slipped that it is different here. My bad. I am still getting used to some of the rules :) Thanks for the patience. The transliteration is fine. I was trying to fix the name that was in Latin character - that one had never styled itself with Latin characters - not in the 70s and 80s anyway :) Anniemod 02:20, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Marianna Majewska

Hello. I had cancelled one of your submissions by mistake, but restored it afterwards. However, it won't appear in your list of edits. Sorry about that ! Linguist 14:10, 19 July 2016 (UTC).

No worries. Chances are that I may have submitted it twice or something - I am working on the Polish titles and hitting circles now and then. I am trying not to double anything but it is bound to happen :) Anniemod 14:12, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Gespräch über die beiden Science Fiction-Hörspiele "Gibt es Sie, Mr. Johns?" von Stanisław Lem und "Olympia Männertrost" von Rosemarie Voges

The submission as created would change the title of this verified interview. Did you, by chance, mean to add "Gespräch über die beiden Science Fiction-Hörspiele "Gibt es Sie, Mr. Johns?" von Stanislaw Lem und "Olympia Männertrost" von Rosemarie Voges" as a transliterated title instead? Ahasuerus 03:08, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Oops. Yes - it should have been transliterated. Sorry Anniemod 03:09, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
Cancelled it and resubmitted properly. Sorry - I tend to look at the screen after I submit for this type of stupid mistakes but that one I missed. Anniemod 03:14, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
I did the same thing the day I added this field :-) Ahasuerus 03:17, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Tisuću i Jedna Noć; Arapske Priče

I have approved the addition of a transliterated title to this record, but I am a bit dubious about the subtitle, "Arapske Priče". I wonder what it may be in reference to. Any ideas? Ahasuerus 03:34, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Croatian -- Arapske is Arab, Arabian; priče is tales, stories, fables (priča I think is the singular but do not hold me to that). The whole title reads: Thousand and One Nights: Arabian tales (if you speak Russian, you would recognize the first word - Slavic root so a lot of the languages use it (Bulgaria does not). In quite a lot of the Balkan languages Bs migrate into Ps and Ds to Ts and Vs to Fs (and vice versa depending on the vowels around it). And ske/ski is a commin suffix for adjectives.
And no - I do not really speak Croatian - I can understand a lot in pretty much any Slavic language (more in some, less in others - Czech is giving me headache most days but I can get myself oriented and find information if I really need it) - at one time or another I had read a story or two in pretty much any of them (with more or less of help of a dictionary).
After you asked and I typed all of the above, I did a quick check through sources for example and and here to make sure than I am not dealing with false cousins as well - happens often. But with context, it is a lot more likely to get it right. Now that ended up a long explanation. Comparative linguistics is one of my hobbies :) Anniemod 04:07, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
Oh, right, "priče" means "tales"/"stories" in Croatian/Serbian/Bosnian. I did check Google Translate, but then I misread what it said. Sorry, didn't mean to waste your time; I must be getting tired. Ahasuerus 04:18, 21 July 2016 (UTC
Talking about languages is never a waste of time :) Anniemod 04:19, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
I was quite fond of Romance and Slavic languages back in the day, but, to paraphrase A. N. L. Munby, "Cataloging SF is a full-time occupation, and one wouldn't get far if one took time off for frivolities like reading" :-\ Ahasuerus 04:45, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Transliteration on Hold

I've put a hold on your transliteration of the publisher name, Seibundō Shinkōsha. Japanese is written in Kana, and Kanji, and if a name or title is in latin characters, it has already been transliterated.--Rkihara 04:22, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

That is pretty much all I know about Japanese :). However - these are not standard Latin-1 characters and search won't be able to find it if someone looks for it without the upper part (or such is my understanding). Adding the transliteration would enable those searches. If that is not a desired effect and it is not needed, then sure, no need to add one Anniemod 04:26, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
I think the first thing to do is to find the name of this publisher in Kanji. According to their Web site, it's "株式会社誠文堂新光社" (assuming I am reading it right.) Once we change the publisher's name to 株式会社誠文堂新光社, we should be able to add "Seibundō Shinkōsha" and "Seibundo Shinkosha" as transliterated names, which should hopefully do the trick. Ahasuerus 04:33, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
That also works - feel free to reject my edit and someone can change the name and move the transliteration and add the second one. :) I was just trying to convince the search to be able to find it. Anniemod 04:36, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
I didn't have any problem searching for it, as characters with macrons are part of the standard Latin-1 character set. I can see that searching might be a problem for someone who doesn't know how to access the diacritics, or doesn't know Modified Hepburn romanization. I've been entering my transliterations using single vowels with macrons instead of doubled vowels, Seibundō, instead of Seibundou, Seibundoo, or Seibundo. This means there can be four transliterations, not counting variations due to the parsing of words, and the rendering of double-consonants. Japanese searches by transliteration will always be difficult without fuzzy search capability.--Rkihara 05:15, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

M. I. Galʹter

FYI, this publisher's case is similar to the Seibundō Shinkōsha case above. The reason that M. I. Galʹter was flagged by our nightly processing is that it published a Yiddish book in 1884 and Yiddish is not normally written in a Latin-based script. According to Barry Dov Walfish's "Bibliographia Karaitica", "М. И. Гальтер" was a Warsaw-based publisher who published Yiddish books in the 1880s-1900s. I have updated the record and everything should be OK now. Ahasuerus 05:14, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Figured that would be the case for that one after we had the other discussion. I will look through the ones I edited last few days and see if there are more cases like that and ask the Mods to fix them for me (cannot change the name on my own after all). Thanks. Sorry for making more work for everyone. Anniemod 05:18, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

2061. Harmadik űrodisszeia

Hello, I've put your submission on hold as, apart from tranliterating the the title, you intended to change its language to "english" (a by-product of your default settings likely). Can you confirm? Hauck 06:44, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

To Hungarian actually - to match the book language (The change to English is automatic when you submit one of those that are old enough to not have a language set when added as it seems). Can you change it to Hungarian or do you want me to cancel and resubmit? Anniemod 06:46, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
Same for Morel találmánya / Láthatatlan városok. I'm going to correct the first one. Hauck 06:51, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
Resubmitted that one. Anniemod 06:53, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Seven Miles Down

I have your edit to make Seven Miles Down a translation of "Profondeur 11000 mètres" on hold. What is your source for the French edition being published first? From what I can find, it was originally published in English (Dietz was an English language writer) and later translated to French. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 23:18, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

I think we need Linguist in here. I tried to change the language of the French guy to English - as his only relevant work he had was in English originally from what I had found. He rejected with the note that the work was actually originally in French and with the title. I just submitted that. Cannot find a proof one way or another. Probably should have left it alone.mIf you want to reject it, that's fine - we will keep digging :) Anniemod 23:23, 24 July 2016 (UTC)
I'll ping Linguist. As for Piccard, his language would stay French even with the work being published in English first. His working language was French. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 23:31, 24 July 2016 (UTC)
As far as I know, both versions were published the same year, i.e. 1961, by Arthaud in France and by Putnam in the USA. As Worldcat never mentions any translator in its dozen records of the 1961 French edition, and as Piccard's language is French, it seems doubtful that the book was entirely translated from the English — not the part Piccard wrote, anyway. It is true that we only have indirect evidence here, but note also that 1) Robert S. Dietz is not mentioned as co-author on Piccard's Wikipedia page in French, and 2) no mention of this book is made on Dietz's WP page in English. We don't really know the extent of Dietz's participation in the writing of the book — which could be minimal as his name doesn't even appear on the cover of the French version, although his participation is confirmed by WorldCat. All in all, if the English version is partially translated from the French, and the French one partially from the English, I am not sure what the modus operandi is. Personally, I would be in favour of considering Piccard's part as more important, and therefore the English edition a translation from the French one. But we can only be certain with the book in hand. Linguist 10:02, 25 July 2016 (UTC).
More importantly, this book ([here) about batyscaphes should not be included in the db, I've transformed the REVIEW into an ESSAY. Hauck 13:17, 25 July 2016 (UTC)
I prefer that solution. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 21:46, 25 July 2016 (UTC)
So this one here should get the same treatment? Anniemod 14:03, 26 July 2016 (UTC)
If we follow the same logic, I think so. Linguist 14:24, 26 July 2016 (UTC).
Done. There are probably lots of similar cases as, at first, a nongenre nonfiction title was included if it was reviewed in a genre magazine. Hauck 14:31, 26 July 2016 (UTC)
Even if the only work that is relevant for us was originally written (not published but written)? I am just asking for other cases -- there is a lot of authors out there that had worked in more than one language. Then I misread the rules on that. Thanks! Anniemod 23:33, 24 July 2016 (UTC)
I'm not sure I understand the question (re: written vs. published). The author language field is for the author's primary language in general. For authors that are bilingual, it is their more frequently used language. In both cases, I'm not aware of anything that says we would artificially limit it to the records we have in the database. -- JLaTondre (talk) 23:56, 24 July 2016 (UTC)
Not the DB here but the works that are relevant to the field - if someone is bi-lingual and most of their works are in Serbian for example but all their speculative work is in Russian, then the language still remain Serbian then? Anniemod 23:59, 24 July 2016 (UTC)
That is my interpretation. -- JLaTondre (talk) 00:04, 25 July 2016 (UTC)
This is the way I see it too. Linguist 10:02, 25 July 2016 (UTC).
Keep in mind that the "Working language" field is only used by the Summary page logic when it needs to decide whether to display a title's language. It's just a convenience thing. Ahasuerus 02:10, 26 July 2016 (UTC)
I just should stop overthinking it :) Anniemod 14:03, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

Language for texts by english authors

Hello, I see that you're setting the language to "english" for a lot of titles by english authors (I'm moderating them). IMHO, this is perhaps a vast and superfluous task as it may be possible that we update "en masse" the whole lot. It may be more pertinent (time-wise) to update the authors themselves and wait for a future automated procedure (maybe Ahasuerus can tell us if it's possible/likely). Hauck 08:11, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

I am chasing the non-English amongst them. I had been updating authors and figured I need to check the titles -- and once I had them open, it was a click away. I suspect you are right though - I would stop setting the titles language except where it makes sense (author has one that is not English). :) Anniemod 08:15, 31 July 2016 (UTC)
It's also because of the fact that I'm now a bit overwhelmed by submissions and cleanup reports ;-(. Hauck 08:44, 31 July 2016 (UTC)
Sorry, not intentional. Switched to only fixing author's languages unless if a work is not in English. Anniemod 08:47, 31 July 2016 (UTC)
No problem, there's sometimes a bottleneck at moderator level as we recently lost our most active moderator. Hauck 09:12, 31 July 2016 (UTC)
Hauck, I check the submissions list a couple of times a day, but most of the time you've cleared it out. I think if you eased off gradually, the rest of us would begin to take up a share of the load.--15:02, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

"Prințesa zilei", by Vladimir Odoevski

You submitted a title record change to delete the following comment from this title record: 

Romanian translation by Monica Bilan of an unidentifed story : Княжна Мими (Knyazhna Mimi "Princess Mimi") or Княжна Зизи (Knyazhna Zizi "Princess Zizi") ?.

Since you had identified the variented title, I understand dropping the last two-thirds of this comment, but I wasn't sure why you would drop the part that identified the translator. So I took the liberty of adding that data back in. Chavey 02:36, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Oops. I thought I left that in place. Sorry. Would have caught it on review and then submitted another change. Thanks for fixing it! Anniemod 02:39, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

"Full Dark, No Stars", by Stephen King

I approved your submission importing titles into this book, but I should note that Amazon claims you are missing another story in the collection, "Under the Weather". If that's there, you should add it manually; if not, you should add a note to that effect. And, if you have them, you should add the page numbers. Chavey 06:10, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

I think I imported from the wrong publication. Let me verify tomorrow and will submit an update. Thanks Anniemod 06:37, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Иван Вълчев

With the addition of full support for non-Latin author name, I have started working on cleaning up Cyrillic languages. When you get a chance, could you please take a look at Иван Вълчев's Summary page to make sure that the notorious letter "ъ" was handled correctly in this case? The current record is a mix of what was there originally and what I have added since the last patch, so it's a mixed bag. The "Family Name" field, which is only accessible via "Edit Author", also needs to be checked if we want the Author Directory to work correctly. TIA! Ahasuerus 02:04, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

That one looks fine - keep in mind that some names will have ь which is different from ъ. The AD is supposed to remain in Latin script, correct? I've been a bit away for a few days, will go play with the new reports now :) Anniemod 19:44, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
Welcome back! Yes, the author directory will remain Latin-based in the foreseeable future. We may create additional, alphabet-specific, directories at some point, but that's a whole different can of worms. Ahasuerus 20:52, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Димитър Пеев

Would you happen to know if "Experiența a reușit" is a translation of "Опитът успя"?

Also, please keep in mind that, as discussed in patch notes:

... there are cases where simply changing the author's canonical name may not be the right things to do. Typically, it has to do with translated titles. Let's use Reki Kawahara's Summary page as an example. At this time we have 17 Japanese titles and 17 English VTs on file. All of them use "Reki Kawahara" as the author's name. If we change the author record to use "川原礫" as the canonical name, it will affect all 34 titles, including the English VTs, which is clearly wrong. What we want to do instead is change the author name associated with the 17 Japanese titles while keeping the current author name associated with the 17 English VTs. We can make the requisite changes in one of two ways:
  • Change the canonical name to "川原礫", then update all English titles to use "Reki Kawahara"
  • Change the author of all English titles to something like "Reki Kawahara (Latin"), then change the main canonical author name to "川原礫", then change the canonical author name of "Reki Kawahara (Latin") to "Reki Kawahara"
[While working on the new cleanup reports I came to the conclusion that the second method is safer. We also need to remember to adjust any affected publication authors.]

I have used this method to split "Димитър Пеев"'s and "Dimităr Peev"'s titles. Hopefully everything looks OK now! Ahasuerus 01:16, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Second method it is then :) Not sure about the translation - the names match and he does not have so many stories. Anniemod 01:37, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
Sounds good, I will set up a VT and add a note about its provisional nature. I am also half way through our Bulgarian titles and hope to be done later tonight. We don't have that many of them, comparatively speaking. Ahasuerus 01:43, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
Done. Ahasuerus 03:34, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Димитри Иванов

Would you happen to know (or be able to look up) whether Димитри Иванов was really born on 1932-01-01? Some sites use "January 1" as a placeholder when the date of birth is unknown and then their bad data spreads across the internet. Ahasuerus 01:53, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

The parts they published from his dossier had the same birthday at the top of it. All Bulgarian sources say the same. Either that is the best kept secret in Bulgaria or it is the correct date. So I cannot be 100% sure but it is more likely that this is date than not. Anniemod 02:07, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
Updated, thanks! Ahasuerus 02:09, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Светослав Минков

When you get a chance, could you please review this discussion? It's kind of messy... Ahasuerus 02:22, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

I love reading short stories but I really hate cataloging collections. :) I posted - it is even messier than these 2 collections - at least 5 in Bulgarian with different content but the same name and with that being his most important story, any collection abroad would be named like that... Anniemod 03:03, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
Robert Silverberg once claimed that he deliberately changed the contents of the 1979 (Sphere) edition of Needle in a Timestack in order to confuse bibliographers :-\ Ahasuerus 03:15, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

(unindent) I have approved the submissions and deleted the French titles that were basically placeholders. For example, we have two French titles for "Asphalte", one as by "Svetoslav Minkov" and the one as by "Светослав Минков". Only the first title actually exists; the second one is a placeholder waiting to be replaced with "Асфалт" (1940). Going forward, please feel free to edit these placeholder titles directly instead of creating a new variant and then deleting the placeholder title. Ahasuerus 19:27, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

I just submitted one that was renaming (with a note to the moderator on what I am doing in case I got it wrong) when I realized what was happening when I was realizing - I was getting ready to submit the deletes when you got them off. :) Takes me a while to find the best way to fix things sometimes. Anniemod 19:36, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
No worries, you are doing fine! I have been working on this project for more than 20 years and maintaining the software for the last 7+ years and I still get confused on occasion :) Ahasuerus 19:43, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Sergei Snegov

I am afraid I had to "hard reject" your "remove Pseudonym" submission for this author. It was no longer approvable, presumably due to out of order submission processing. I will move the bio data to the main author record next. We are getting close -- thanks for working on this cleanup report! Ahasuerus 18:05, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Another moderator had been helping and fixing the bit of a mess I had managed to create while I was trying to get all submissions though so I can fix it:) Let me ask the question: what would be the preferred way here: what I just did (rename author on all Russian edition, then use the new entry for canonical and main author OR try to keep the original record for canonical and rename author on the latin ones, ask a moderator to change the canonical and the change the new latin name (SnegovLatin for example) back)? I kinda like my way for the Russians - then all that is needed is to get the data into the new record... (translated authors are different). Thoughts? Anniemod 18:10, 27 September 2016 (UTC)
Either way is OK, it's just a question of minimizing the number of edits. If it's a 50-50 split, the way you handled Snegov is probably better: there are fewer moving parts, which makes mistakes less likely. Ahasuerus 18:24, 27 September 2016 (UTC)
Without making the wrong pseudonym in the middle of course - I was still trying to decide what to do exactly :) I prefer my way for a different reason as well - even if the process is left midway, we do not have a fictious author to confuse people - it still looks incomplete but at least we do not have a non-existing name for someone that just happens to stumble on top of it. I guess it will need to be a decision on a case by case basis.
I am not sure how much time I will have next few days but will be slowing working through this report (nothing else left for me in the others...) :) Anniemod 18:41, 27 September 2016 (UTC)
When the software change was made five weeks ago, we had over 1,800 Cyrillic titles whose authors needed to be changed/reviewed. This morning we were down to 793. Right now we are at 654. We are getting there :) Ahasuerus 18:44, 27 September 2016 (UTC)
Oh, I know. I had been looking at the numbers :) They will get fixed - until the next software change that sends us all updating them all one more time :) Anniemod 18:47, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Pierre Benoit

I have approved the submissions changing title authors, but please keep in mind that publication authors need to be changed as well, e.g. see this title record and its associated publications. Ahasuerus 23:38, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

I am working through them in some order - I think I got one of the publications already in. :) Anniemod 23:42, 27 September 2016 (UTC)
Got a bit distracted earlier today and forgot where I left it off - so was waiting for all the pending to clear so I do not submit the same again :) Sorry. I think I got them all (or at least once these are done, I can see what else I missed) Anniemod 23:49, 27 September 2016 (UTC)
No worries -- one of the nightly cleanup reports finds title/publication author mismatches.
Of course, in an ideal world all publications would have a "reference title" and inherit that title's authors instead of having a separate set of authors. Alas, early on we made certain design decisions which make it impossible. Oh well, perhaps one of these days we'll revisit this issue... Ahasuerus 00:10, 28 September 2016 (UTC)
Where would be the fun in that? Nothing showed up on the report I believe so I think I got them all:) Anniemod 19:24, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Note from Wolland

Hi, i've absent but now i'm back. I've replied to your question. Check here. Thanks.Wolland 09:21, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Welcome back :) Responded in your talk page :) Anniemod 15:32, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

XXXX english

Hello, just to remind you that the titles by "Valery Brussov English" and "Alexander Kazantsev English" will have to be dealt with (they are showing on our cleanup reports for a few days). Thanks for having a look. Hauck 10:31, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I know. However, I had been waiting for a moderator to change canonical names for the last 2 days: http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/ISFDB:Moderator_noticeboard#Russian_Cannonical_names . As soon as someone changes these, I can fix the English postfixed authors. Anniemod 13:44, 29 September 2016 (UTC)
I didn't realise that it was a moderator-only task. Hopefully it's now done (note that moderators willing to moderate or do such actions are a small subset of the whole, whence some slowness to respond). Hauck 14:10, 29 September 2016 (UTC)
It got changed a few weeks ago - when the patch allowing non Latin canonical names were allowed. I think it was a precaution so that people cannot change the name and mess up hundreds of records :) I know that only a few of the moderators are helping on those - so I had been patient :) Thanks for getting these - will respond over in the moderator board if anything else is needed. Anniemod 14:13, 29 September 2016 (UTC)
Sorry, my fault. I should have caught it. Ahasuerus 15:36, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Unidentified parent titles of translated works

FYI, I have changed the following two titles:

First Word (Omni, August 1987): The date was changed from 0000-00-00 to 1987-08-00 and the language was changed from Russian to English.
Author's Note (Plutonia): The date was changed from 0000-00-00 to 1957-00-00 and the language was changed from Russian to English.

Although it seems likely that these essays were originally written in Russian, we don't know if the original texts ever appeared, much less what their Russian titles and dates of publication were. If and when we find this information, we'll update the records. Ahasuerus 15:36, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

I was not sure what to do with those... just wanted to get them to the correct pages before I forget about them and was planning to do some digging to see if I can find the originals (which is why I set the dates to the 0000 year). So in such cases, leave all as is, just change the author. Will remember this for next time. Sometimes varianting is a bit confusing. Thanks! :) Anniemod 15:40, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Darrell Sweet's cover for "Темное солнце"

Your submission would change the author of this COVERART title from "Darrell Sweet" to "Даррелл Свит". Checking the publication record, I see that it says "Cover Artist not credited. Same art as on US editions." Since the artist is not credited, wouldn't we want to use the original author name? Ahasuerus 16:38, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

It is not credited but we know how the name is written in Russian. It comes down to policies I think - as we know who it is, I would have used the Russian name and put a note that it is not credited if I was adding it. If that is not what the current policy is, feel free to reject the change. Would the same apply if it was a Chinese artist? Or Japanese? How would anyone even see who the artist is if they cannot read the alphabet? :) Anniemod 16:42, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
The biggest issue here is that there are many ways to transliterate names and we don't know which version the publisher might have chosen. Even "Darrell Sweet", which seems reasonably straightforward, can be transliterated differently. For example, this Russian edition of Lord of Chaos credits him as "Даррел Свит". Worse, the standard Russian transliteration of Darrell (Antony) Sweet's name is apparently "Дэрел (Энтони) Свит". Once we start the guessing game, we are back in the murky world of transliterations, which we have just escaped from.
Now, if we used the same standard for artists that we use for writers, we would enter "uncredited" and create a VT, but the rules are different because we didn't want to end up with 100,000+ "uncredited" COVERART titles. Ahasuerus 16:55, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
Yes, we've got a clear rule in this case: "CREDIT FROM SECONDARY OR NO CREDIT GOES TO CANONICAL".Hauck 16:58, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
I did not guess in this case - I never do for actual names on records. I had never seen the illustrator credited in a different way than Даррелл Свит (one л here and there but two are more prelevant or eventually Д.К. Свит. See https://fantlab.ru/art180 for example. Or https://vk.com/album-86542610_212612236 . Or http://tolkienists.ru/photo/risunki/darrell_svit_risunki/25 . Or even the obituary: https://fantlab.ru/blogarticle17724 I did not come up with it out of a nowhere - I checked the name in the Russian bibliographies and I had seen it printed that way :) In any way - if it is against the rules, then fine. Anniemod 17:07, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
Sounds good. I have changed the name from "Darrell Sweet" to "Darrell K. Sweet", the canonical version, "ignored" it on the cleanup report and rejected the submission. Ahasuerus 17:19, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
Thanks. Will remember to do that next time I find one of those. Anniemod 17:21, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
And then comes the search. I am looking for anything from Свит. Neither Свит, not Svit picks up Sweet (for obvious reasons). And yet, we do have a Russian book that someone may find in a search under the proper name. All of the spelling differences are on the first name - the family name never changes and it is not that close to the English one to make the logical jump if you never saw it written in Latin. Just thinking aloud -- haven't been here long enough to understand some of the finer points of the rules.Anniemod 17:16, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
Well, once we start entering Russian publications which use "Даррелл Свит", "Д. К. Свит", etc, these forms of Sweet's name will be added to the database and become searchable. This particular publication, however, doesn't use a Cyrillic form of Sweet's name (or any form, for that matter), so even a "naive" user would have no reason to search for "Свит". Ahasuerus 17:27, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
Not based on that one book - but anyone reading fantasy probably knows his name. But you are right - it will come under the correct name when a book with it is properly added. Will be more careful with uncredited art going forward. The way things are going, I will know all the special cases before I even start adding my books :) Anniemod 17:34, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Knulp: Three Tales from the Life of Knulp

Hello. I have approved your submission, but don't forget to check the language setting when varianting a translation (you had left it on "German"). Thanks, Linguist 09:18, 3 October 2016 (UTC).

You cannot do it while varianting to an existing title - you need two separate submissions when you variant to an existing title. Once it is approved and I am back online, I usually submit the language change. Anniemod 09:28, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
You can't change the language as part of a "Make Variant of an Existing Title" submission, but you can simultaneously create another submission changing the language of the variant title. Ahasuerus 23:55, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

"Z. Bobîr"

I have been thinking about your "Z. Bobîr" submission for the last 20 minutes. My tentative conclusion is that "З. Бобырь", the Russian translator of hundreds of SF stories, will get her own Author page once we have full support for translators. On the other hand, "Z. Bobîr" -- assuming that the two Romanian source credit her correctly -- only exists as a pseudonym of Димитър Пеев. It's rather unlikely that she translated anything into Romanian, so "Z. Bobîr" will never appear in our database in any other context.

If so, then I think the best way to handle this unusual situation would be to set up "Z. Bobîr" as a "Димитър Пеев" pseudonym. I'll invite Linguist to stop by and share his thoughts. Ahasuerus 23:52, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

I had been wondering since you discovered the explanation if this should be a pseudonym or a new entry.:) I am not sure if that will be the only translation -- but in the meantime, pseudonyming works for me. If down stream we get more works signed this way (not because she ttanslated into Romanian but because someone translated from her works, we can always reverse. We should somehow note on the pseudonym profile the situation though I think. Anniemod 00:06, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
As far as translations into Romanian are concerned, "Z. Bobîr" is a unique occurrence (a hapax, for a linguist) on Moshul SF, which is fairly complete up to 1991. So using this name, under this Romanian spelling, as a pseudonym of Димитър Пеев seems quite safe. If any trouble arises later, it should not take long to fix it. Linguist 08:21, 9 October 2016 (UTC).
Sounds good. I have set up VTs/pseudonyms and adjusted notes. Another mystery bites the dust! :-) Ahasuerus 16:05, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
While digging for something else, I found a few mentions of Зинаида Бобырь doing translations out from Bulgarian into Russian around that time. So this connection seems 100% sure at this point - why the Romanians used her name is a different story. :) Anniemod 20:31, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
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