Non-English sites... how to make them more comfortable?

So, people who use the non-English sites, what are the top things that scream out "this is an English site"?

As you may know, we're asking members for non-English bookpiles.

I've made a number of small changes, like changing the "Recent activity" box on the home page to recent activity on that site.

Here's French:



(Note: This is being rolled out across sites slowly. If your site doesn't have it yet, it will soon.)

So, what's next on the list? Especially, what's next that we can easily change? Any ideas?

I must first of all admit that I haven't really thought of this before. I'm Dutch but I've never ever felt unwelcome/uncomfortable here.

BUT: maybe it would help if you could somehow point users to groups in their own language.

I think that making the home-page modules for What Members are Reading and Popular This Month site specific too would be good. I'm looking at the French site now, and the books are all the same, though some of the titles are translated in the WMAR module. In PTM, only one title is translated.

You are asking the people who are comfortable in English. Maybe you could arrange for translations to be made and posted in the various language groups.

> 4: Good point.

1. As far as German language books are concerned, you need vastly better library data sources. Amazon.de carries only a small part of German books in its catalog and actively de-lists titles whose publishers do not pay fees or whose shipping and handling is considered too expensive by Amazon.

The two missing libraries of record in Germany and Austria (email z3950@obvsg.at with subject "Z3950-Zugang" regarding access/potential costs) both offer access in your preferred format, but want you to talk to them first in case of heavy duty access (which I already suggested some years ago when you still had a European representative).

2. Your "add books"/"change collection" mechanics need improvement. It is much easier to add books on your competitors' sites (No, it is not a case of library data sources. Overcat exists.).

3. The German translation needs work. While much better than your standard Korean product manual, it is off-key in many details ("a community of bookworms" - are worms really social animals? A pack/flock/school/covey/pride of worms?).

4. Make a strategic commitment: Either you care about international users or you just tolerate them. If you care about them, you can't simply ignore or brush off bug reports.

FYI, #2 is outside of the scope of this thread as it sucks for all languages. Also, Tim has already said a redo of the Add books section is in the works (or at least planning stage).

>7 brightcopy: I am glad to hear that, but the current combination of a less than stellar interface with crappy sources must drive some users away. As a power user, I often feel like I am trying to interact with an Alzheimer patient.

Repainting the car might not be the best investment if the engine needs repair.

7> No doubt. It's just not a language-specific issue (as opposed to your #1).

Well, this is not a language-specific request, more of a geographical issue so I don't know if this qualifies for this thread: LT time.
Would it really be such a difficult thing to code a system where a user can select his/her time zone in his/her profile? This would make e.g. following Talk much more pleasant.

10> Not difficult, just time consuming. But I think it's one of those things that needs doing. Sometimes you just gotta eat your broccoli before you can have dessert.

#10 and #11

Besides the time is wrong for English users as well as non-English users.

No, good point. That would be a help.

I don't know how important this is, but if the translations were better, the international sites would be nicer to use. I have seen comments that people think that the translations are made by a machine. It is often not possible to use correct language in translations.

I can't improve the translations. Only members can do that?

How can we promote that to people, and get better translations?

14: It is often not possible to use correct language in translations.

Some specific examples? If it's not possible to translate correctly, then perhaps that is something that Tim would have to fix.

>15 timspalding:, 16

It would be much easier to translate whole sentences or passages than single words or phrases.

In this topic there are examples of what kind of problems the translators have:
Hunting homographs

Most people who use so called international sites are used to bad translations, so I am not sure if it is worth the trouble to change the translation system of LT. More important are probably things like: are there good sources where to choose from and do those sources work ; what new books in your language are added daily or weekly ; are there recommendations in your language. Book related things are more important.

>16 r.orrison:
There are plenty of places where English homographs forces a choice between two different forms. An example is that English does not decline adjectives, which creates trouble for languages that does.

I rarely user the other language sites - even that in my native Dutch. But if this is really done by simply translating LT word by word - as I get from #17 - then the word order will also be wrong in most languages.

19> It's not word by word, it's phrase by phrase, though those phrases can sometimes be one word. Like "Today" on the posts here is a one word one. But "jump to first unread" is an entire phrase.

If you read the fascinating topic Anneli linked to, it appears it's a big more sophisticated than that I thought it was. They even have marking for different things like imperative versus adjective.

We can work on homographs. We just need to find them and kill them.

They even have marking for different things like imperative versus adjective.

Right. LT can put hints into the translation string. But we don't always know to do so.

Reading that homographs thread made me hope nothing I write ever becomes popular by non-English users. I'm not TOTALLY sheltered and did learn Spanish, but it didn't have a lot of this weirdness.

You don't know the half of it. And that thread reminds me of the flamewars involving Boekerij who kept insisting on a purist - and very Flemish - approach to translating. It's part of the reason why I refused to get too involved in the Dutch language site.

Ah, well. Water under the bridge, and all that...

Or through the dike, perhaps...

Ack, don't say such things to a Dutchman. I only have ten fingers you know ;-)

>16 r.orrison:: About translations -

The interface presented when hitting the "Translate" button brings up phrases in the current page - but rarely phrases in pages embedded in the current page. Hard to figure out, and often results in only partially translated pages. The interface could be improved.

>3 staffordcastle: What Members are Reading and Popular This Month site specific

Only if it's an optional setting! This might work well for the French with 13.000+ users, but many "other-than-english" sites have so small a user base the statistics would be of little use.

Besides, many of us enjoy seeing what international users are reading.

Perdonenme por dirigirme a Vds. en espanol. La siguiente critica, escrita por un usuario frances (de nuevo perdon por proponer otro idioma) resume bien el sentir de muchos usuarios no anglofonos.
.

Gruppo: French Connection
Argomento: Pourquoi je quitte LT.
JonasR
Bonjour à tou(te)s,

Après trois mois d'utilisation, je me décide à quitter Lybrarything.

Découvert suite à une critique dithyrambique du Monde 2, je m'étais tout d'abord enthousiasmé pour cette application "Web 3.0", qui me semblait à même de permettre un partage de mes goûts bibliophiles avec d'autres personnes, voire éventuellement des rencontres et des prêts "In Real Life", le tout dans un espace virtuel exempt de publicité, relativement respectueux des données privées.

Après ouverture de mon compte, indexage frénétique de ma bibliothèque, recours aux suggestions, extase devant les plus grosses bibliothèques privées, inscriptions sur les différents groupes de discussions francophones, et puis... rien.

En trois mois, seul un certain "Mon carnet" a daigné me faire l'honneur d'indiquer ma bibliothèque comme "interesting", sans toutefois entamer de discussion. Les groupes de discussion m'apparaissent désespérément peu actifs, et j'ai atteint la limite des 200 bouquins gratuits, sans que les avantages d'un abonnement (à vie !) ne m'aient sauté aux yeux.

Je n'ai pas cessé de lire durant ces trois mois. Et beaucoup. Mais à aucun moment, LT ne m'aura guidé dans ces lectures, à l'inverse des discussions avec mon libraire, mon bibliothécaire, mes professeurs, mes collègues, ou tout simplement mes amis...

Je le regrette fort, (et vous me direz peut-être : "vous n'avez pas fréquenté les bons groupes, il fallait être plus persévérant...) mais une fois de plus, le "web 3.0" et ses multiples applications "relationnelles", m'apparaissent comme une énorme perte de temps.

Dernière mauvaise surprise, j'ai découvert en m'y intéressant que l'on ne peut supprimer son compte. Tout au plus, la firme hébergeant ce site propose de supprimer un compte qui ne contient aucun ouvrage au bout de trois mois. J'ai donc été contraint de déférencer totalement ma bibliothèque et ne peut donc plus qu'espérer et attendre ladite suppression.

Bien à vous.

Yes, there is certainly a problem in that many other language sites simply aren't very active - socially that is. It's a viscious circle. People are disapointed in LT because they don't actually make many contacts. That means they will leave, or become less active themselves. Which means other users will get frustrated, etc.

I think it's part of what we are trying to address here. But, of course, social activity will always be dependent on the users themselves.

(Sorry for responding in English - my French and Spanish are not sufficient for active use).

Muy amable al responderme. Al contrario, mi ingles me permite leer, pero no escribir en esa lengua. Pero como ve, Vd. y yo nos comunicamos de algun modo.
No podria esto servir de leccion en otros casos?

Yes, something like that would be great. But unfortunately too many people are really monolingual.

About groups... There is a way to find all the same-language groups from the Group page, under language (plus then you'll have to click on the language). What if they were more prominent? A tab on the librarything-local? Or a way to insert "my language groups umbrella-thingy" on one's Home page? This might make smaller LT-language-groups more easily available and thus MAYBE lower the threshold of starting literature conversations & getting to know each other socially. Maybe. Don't know. Just a thought.

Podria incluirse en el profile una casilla que especificase en qué idiomas uno puede comunicarse. Quisiera recordar que la capacidad de escribir/leer/entender/hablar una lengua es independiente. Lectores de ingles en Espana o Italia pueden encontrarse muchos, de los cuales pocos escribiran bien.

Good idea. In fact much the same - in reverse - goes for many North Europeans. I can read French, Italian and Spanish - and maybe Portuguese with some extra effort - but I wouldn't dare writing in any of them (well, French maybe, if things don't get too complicated).

For those of you not understanding panbiot's message: the suggestion is to somehow be able to indicate, on your profile, in which languages you're able to communicate.

Edited for clarity. But hey, panbiot is an Italian writing in Spanish, and I'm a Dutchman writing in English, but we're still having a conversation! There's hope for us yet :-)

This raises some interesting points about the importance of the social aspects of LT. We often hear that LT is a cataloguing site at heart, and that the social features are an add-on. Maybe the social aspects are more important than people like to admit?

LT ne m'aura guidé dans ces lectures

This is a place where I've always wished LT would do more. There are so many ways that LT could use its data to help people discover new books to read, but information tends to be largely restricted to the work pages (which, of course, you only look at if you already know about the work in question). Even the basic user recommendations page had the critical exclude-authors-in-your-catalogue feature removed, for some unknown reason. English-speakers can in many ways circumvent these problems by participating in the active English-language forums to find endless good book ideas, but I can certainly understand how the site without Talk could seem pretty limited.

35>

You make a good point, but I think you're overstating it; I don't view the "exclude authors in my catalogue" as essential, but even so, browsing by tag or looking at work recommendations on works that you enjoyed are useful ways of discovering new books, as are looking at libraries similar to yours. Of course, this requires a critical mass of books in a language that you read, so it comes back to the same problem; I just don't think Talk is as critical as you imply.

>36 lorax: Well, I personally know one person who has been driven away by the lack of an exclude-author option. I think that's already one too many. When people see that one recommendations feature fails in a major way, they aren't necessarily going to check all the others to see whether they're any better.

I don't know enough about what books get translated into various languages, but the work system should partially alleviate the need for a high number of works in a particular language. Can someone who owns mostly non-English books advise on this?

The problem with that is that they first have to be combined manually. Doing my best, but there's only so much I can do.

37>

Wow, I didn't know about that; it seems a small thing to leave over to me, but I can't argue with the facts. Is that really going to disproportionally affect non-English-speaking users, though?

but rarely phrases in pages embedded in the current page

Good point. I could do some things there, I think. It won't get me to 100%, but it could help.

have so small a user base the statistics would be of little use

It's a small times a small, since the feature is not much used.

Yes, there is certainly a problem in that many other language sites simply aren't very active - socially that is. It's a viscious circle. People are disapointed in LT because they don't actually make many contacts. That means they will leave, or become less active themselves. Which means other users will get frustrated, etc.

So, there are two approaches here. One is to try to built that social aspect. But, frankly, I'm not certain we can do much of that by focusing on that.

The other is to acknowledge that many LTers are here for the cataloging and the implicit social aspects (recommendations, tags, etc.) than the explicit social aspects (groups, etc.)

Fundamentally, I think we fall short on both accounts. But the core of LibraryThing and the seed of its growth has always been the cataloging. If we can improve the non-social experience for non-English members, I think the social will follow, if it will ever follow. Besides, the goal is happy members generally, not only members happy because of social features.

know one person who has been driven away by the lack of an exclude-author option

There are a million ways to improve LibraryThing. It's possible the best way to improve LT for non-English users is to focus on common features. Maybe you have identified one of the most important. (I think you've identified a low/mid-level one.)

I have a feeling, however, that there are some low-hanging fruit when it comes to internationalization--things that would repay the effort, even considering the relatively modest payoff if it succeeds.

>39 lorax: I think a lack of good built-in recommendation features will disproportionately affect non-English-speaking users because they don't have much alternative. I know I find the vast majority of my recommendations in Talk these days.

>40 timspalding: As you've probably gathered already from my posts, I think the "implicit social aspects" are key.

Fair point. To counter this, however, the recommendations are not going to be based on readers like them with respect to language. So, for example, some Moliere books recommend Satre. That's a decent recommendation in an American context--"you like great French literature? Here's some more." But it makes no sense in a French context. ("You like Shakespeare? Here's George Orwell!")

>42 _Zoe_:

Well, so, for example, allowing members to translate tags would be interesting. That's implicit. And tags look very English-centric now.

> 40: Oh, no problem with me. I was just responding to the Spanish language messages. But apparently lack of social connectivity is a problem for French languagage users, and possibly fort other Romance language readers as well.

>43 timspalding: I think the fact that it only makes sense in certain contexts implies that it's really just a mediocre recommendation overall, but that's straying from the point of this conversation.

>44 timspalding: I agree that that would be interesting. I hope there would always be an option to see the untranslated tag cloud, though.

Also: I think highlighting untranslated text is a very bad idea, especially since you have to go to a whole other page to actually do anything about it. I would tend to avoid a site that used excessive highlighting in general, and especially so when the highlighted parts are precisely the most useless.

>46 _Zoe_:

Right. Because book recommendations are valid in all situations.

Ehr, essentially - sure. But for some users some books may simply not be avialable in any language they could read.

Open question: would a function (optional) to filter recommendations by language help?

Right. Thanks for the suggestion. That could be done.

Tim : Drawing your attention to # 33 (roughly translated by me in # 34). Something like that might really help non English speaking users - at least in social connectivity, especially if you could make that - in itself - searchable.

Basically it would just indicate: who out there would understand what I'm saying?

40> There are a million ways to improve LibraryThing. It's possible the best way to improve LT for non-English users is to focus on common features. Maybe you have identified one of the most important. (I think you've identified a low/mid-level one.)

It doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me either. But perhaps someone with a few books by a highly prolific author in their library might get a recommendation page filled with that author which would be a pain. So, not important for most but important enough to drive some people away sounds like something you should do if you want to attract more members. Especially if it isn't too hard which this feature doesn't seem to be.

>44 timspalding:

I really like the idea of member-translated tags. I'm hopelessly monolingual, with a little French reading skill and very poor written, but I would imagine even translating just the top tags would have significant impact, because of their power law distribution.

Another idea might be a simplified help page with the most important tips for speakers of each language, for example, sources to use for data entry, how to find groups in a language, and trouble spots with workarounds for each language. French speakers who enter one of the most common tag concepts--"roman" for a novel--will find the tag page less than useful.

Maybe certain site-related groups, particularly Welcome to Librarything, could list ambassadors in its group description, volunteers for each language who would be willing to accept messages on their profiles for help? In the past I have cobbled together a brief response to a French post on the Frequently Asked Questions group, pointing him to a group for Francophones.

>52 jjwilson61: Right, and the impact is especially pronounced for people who haven't catalogued many books--i.e., exactly the people who are assessing whether LT offers enough value for them to continue using it.

I was going to set up a sample account to demonstrate, but my god, adding series books is annoying. Maybe this weekend.

54>

I'm not going to argue that the impact is pronounced for small libraries, or that some people did have the experience you describe. But it seems to me that most people -- at least I hope so -- would say "huh, maybe I should enter more than a couple dozen books before expecting good recommendations" rather than giving up in disgust -- that is, that they'd give it a fair shake.

(Also, as Tim says, the pure cataloging issues are still what draw a lot of people. How's the situation for library sources to add books in other languages? Is there some low-hanging fruit there?)

>55 lorax: The thing is, we can go to a work page and get recommendations for a single book. Giving the system 50 books to work with should make the results better, not worse.

For cataloguing, how's the diacritical situation right now? I'm all in favour of low-hanging fruit, but the system has to be basically functional first.

Post (slightly) off-topic

I just wanted to say that the conversation between BarkingMatt and panbiot (28-34) brought a massive smile to this (relatively) monolingual Australian.

(I do know a fair amount of latin, which means I could pick up just enough of what panbiot was saying for it to make absolutely no sense)

Returning you to your scheduled topic :)

I don't speak/read Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and French (in descending order) - I've studied or been exposed to all. Which means that, like TineOliver, I could understand many words and no meaning in panbiot's messages...

The main factor in making non-english sites comfortable, is probably NOT to make them feel separate.

I've worked a lttle bit with multi-language applications. If there's one thing I've learned, it's this: Never, ever make functions/data/anything more accessible to one national group of users than to another. You may have the best, most logical reasons but your users are going to hate you for it. This is common psychology, not logic.

LT just made a GIANT leap in the right direction by introducing inter-language visibility and data borrowing for common knowledge. Probably the best thing that's happened since I joined.

Here's a few other suggestions. Appologies if I'm stating the obvious (which, of course, cannot be stated too often):

1. It's an international site, so some communication will have to be in English. There's no need to paint i.e. "Announcements" in yellow marker every time a new message is broadcast. Marking text that often changes gives the non-English sites a perpetual unfinished look.

2. Keep an open eye on Chat. Try to identify issues that causes bickering between language groups, and see if they can be solved by application fuctionality.

Example: Series. Always a good source for "you can't do that here/yes, I bloody well can" debates. Could be solved by making it possible to tag a Series with language. By default the Work page header would display Series info tagged with site language. With possiblity to override.

2. Could we please stop referring to www.librarything.com as "The English Site" and make it "The Main Site" instead?

English is our trade lingua. The main site is in our trade lingua. The main site has the most and best data because everybody can contribute. That's immediatedly understandable and acceptable. While "The English site has the most and the best" starts to get under your skin after a while. Not logic, but that's the way it works.

>59 geitebukkeskjegg:: Estas modificaciones, sirven para hacer el sito "psicologicamente" mas acogedor o simpatico a los no-anglofonos o para favorecer realmente la comprension? No digo que "dar senales de amistad" sea inutil...

Por ejemplo, traducir los tags. Es una idea bonita, pero un tag en ingles no es un obstaculo para un italiano/frances/espanol de cultura media ( >58 jjmcgaffey: " I could understand many words" ) Bueno, quizas traducir los tags italianos al ingles es diferente...



>53 WalkerMedia: "Maybe certain site-related groups, particularly Welcome to Librarything, could list ambassadors in its group description, volunteers for each language who would be willing to accept messages on their profiles for help? In the past I have cobbled together a brief response to a French post on the Frequently Asked Questions group, pointing him to a group for Francophones."

Si un no anglofono tiene una duda o una propuesta sobre por ejemplo, un CK, como lo resuelve? Los miembros de grupos no-anglofoos se ayudan entre si pero sus conclusiones no sirven para nada si no llegan hasta la administracion. La idea de caffron me parece interesante.

59> Tim at one point was thinking about changing the interface to other language versions of the site to allow you to just switch using some sort of UI element on an LT page. That way there wouldn't be different sites for different languages, just one site which can be switched to whatever language you want. Would that make LT more friendly to non-English speakers?

I can see it both ways.

61: It would certainly make the other sites more accessible to people who primarily use the .com one. The last time I looked, I had more Welsh language books than most of the people on the Welsh site, but I never go there because it's too much of a bother to switch.

I also like the idea mentioned somewhere upthread of being able to indicate which languages you read, speak, etc. I can follow most of panbiot's Spanish posts, for example, but my Spanish is too rusty for me to try writing in it.

You can still retain the language urls taking you to LT with that language being used but after that be able to switch languages from inside the site. I would think not having to log in on each language site you visit would be a plus as well.

If users could specify their languages, and groups be identified by language, then this data could be used to filter/heavily weight the group recommendation system.

61> Yes, that's the method I'd prefer.

I guess language-specific sites will never take off well because:

* people are not automatically directed to their language
* people HATE being directed to their language
* people are lazy. Members who can speak, write and read English will use the main site.
* When they use the main site, they don't see if there are more Spanish/French/Dutch people who own that book
* When they use the main site, there is no easy way to see/keep track of groups in their language, Talk being the monster it is.
* There is no easy way to find and reviews in your own language
* No book giveaways in their own language

sophies_choice 67:

When they use the main site, there is no easy way to see/keep track of groups in their language, Talk being the monster it is.

How could this be made easier? It seems simple enough to me -- there's the "By language" option on the Groups page -- but then I speak English. If I'm using a language-specific site, rather than the "main site", when I go to Talk, in addition to the All topics / Hot topics that a new member who hadn't joined any groups would see, there's an "En español" (for instance) option, which also seems straightforward to me. What do you suggest? (The one thing I can see is that the "Language(s) of the Group" is frequently inaccurate -- I see a lot of English groups if I select "En español", which is disturbing; the group creators can just set the languages to be anything they want, even if it doesn't reflect the actual language of the conversation. Maybe allow people other than the group creator to edit those languages, or at least suggest to the staff that they're not correct?)

What do you suggest?

Edited for typo

I never use www.librarything.it because I can read English, so sophies_choice is right, I don't really need it. The translation method had a part in it, it was full of little bits of phrases out of context and at times utterly impossible to translate, at first I found that funny, I translated a lot of things, but then it became frustrating as I grew more and more aware that a good, full translation would never come out this way. So, I saw no point in using a site that would always remain half-translated. Also, in .it I would have the strange feeling to be missing something, as it's obvious that the most active site, the one where new ideas are being discussed, that the majority of the members uses, is the English (or main) one. I don't mean that LT staff does not care for the sites in other languages, all I'm saying is that's just my "sensation": I know it's probably groundless, but it's there nevertheless.

>68 lorax: It might be helpful if everyone had those options, or if they appeared based on the proposed "languages I read" profile setting.

Also, it might be nice if we could specify the language(s) of individual threads. I haven't actually tested that Talk setting, but it sounds like it's by group?

I just visited www.librarything.it and I had a confirmation of my thoughts: the "Recent Activity" box on the main page contains this phrase:

USERNAME recensiti: BOOK TITLE

This makes no sense in Italian. In English it was "USERNAMENE reviewed BOOK TITLE". The translation page gave to translate the rough word "reviewed", completely out of its context, which is impossible to translate in only one way in Italian. So the result is a bad translation --> very little desire to use the .it site.

>71 Moloch:

The solution there is to make the whole phrase translatable, not chop it up, or at least differentiate between "reviewed (VERB, SINGULAR)" and "reviewed (ADJECTIVE)" I must say, I'm frustrated whenever I see code that chops it up. I've found it impossible to make sure such phrases are thought through.

So, your solution--if it is a solution--is to focus on places where the translation is choppy?

But wait, that's not the problem here:

The phrase is "<SUB1> reviewed." For other combinations (eg., "reviewed, rated") we make separate strings that have the whole phrase, to avoid the problem of chopped up language.

Is the problem that some might imagine the SUB1 was a number, making the "reviewed" adjectival with a hidden "to be." Because it seems to me the phrase "So-and-so reviewed:" should be translatable into Italian or any other Romance language without ambiguity.

I did, however, change a part that printed the title then translate('by') then the author. Italian shouldn't have a problem with that, but other languages will. It's now "SUB1 by SUB2."

Here's the current ones I have

Dannelke ha votato:
Leaving Las Vegas di John O'Brien

wyvernfriend ha recensito e votato:
Impetuous Innocent (MIRA) di Stephanie Laurens (leggi la recensione)

wyvernfriend recensiti:
The Alexander cipher di Will Adams (leggi la recensione)

So, the "recensiti" is the adjectival form. I'll change it to specify that it's a verb, and translate it as "ha recensito."

Whatever you've just done on the translation side is leaking onto the English site. See Member Connections.

v

Thanks. Fixed.

72

Sorry, I don't understand (choppy?). My thoughts were: "This site (.it) isn't translated properly and completely, and perhaps it will never be, with this system. I can read English, why bother to use a site that can piss me off with these (occasional) wrong translations?". Maybe other foreign users think so. I made the "reviewed" example because it was the first thing that caught my eye on the very home page. It's been a while since I've been helping with the translations, I do admit there might have been improvements in the system I'm not aware of.

15> Tim says: I can't improve the translations. Only members can do that?

WARNING: very long message

A while ago I found some errors on the Dutch tour pages. But I didn't know how to changes those.
After reading message 15 I remembered this and that's why I place this under this topic.
Now I noticed the tour pages have been improved but the wrongly written words/sentences were not corrected. Therefore the next examples from the Dutch Tour pages with the improved translation:

Page: Wat is LibraryThing? (What is LibraryThing?) http://www.librarything.nl/tour/1
1st sentence: ... LibraryThing is een website voor catalogiseren en een sociaal netwerk voor boekliefhebbers. ... mb(must be) ... LibraryThing is een website voor het catalogiseren van boeken en een sociaal netwerk voor boekliefhebbers. ...
It is not necessary to mention it twice; on top and under the text. (We've learned a lot more since Hansje Brinker). It's your choice where you want to put it, but I think the bottom is the best place.
2nd sentence: ...uigeleend ... mb ... uitgeleend ...

Page: Het is simpel om je bij LibraryThing aan te sluiten! (LibraryThing is easy to join!) http://www.librarything.nl/tour/2
3rd sentence: ...mogelijkheid om een e-mail adres ... mb ... mogelijkheid om een e-mailadres ...
3rd sentence: ...wachtwoord hebt verloren of vergeten). ... mb ... wachtwoord hebt verloren of bent vergeten). ...
Shortlink - Page: Homepage: http://www.librarything.com/ and http://www.librarything.nl/
The list with recent activity uses: reviewed, added, rated: (besprak, voegde toe, waardeerde:). When you use more than one verb it should be: reviewed and added: (besprak en voegde toe:) or reviewed, added and rated: (besprak, voegde toe en waardeerde:).

Page: Wat Staat Er Op Jouw Boekenplank? (What's On Your Bookshelf?) http://www.librarything.nl/tour/3
We don't use capitals in a sentence, only the 1st word has a capital.
1st sentence; ...maa reen ... mb ... maar een ...
2nd sentence: ...waaribder ... mb ... waaronder ...
3rd sentence: ... LibraryThing verkrijgt boekinformatie van ... mb ... LibraryThing verkrijgt de informatie over het boek van ...
3rd sentence: ...met behulp van de In welk systeem? functie. ... mb ...met behulp van de functie: In welk systeem?. ...

When I add books I search also at the site of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek because various editions don't have the same information. You can search for the editions, which all have a separate reference number ("Aanvraagnummer"). When you fill in this number you get the right bookinformation. This might be worth while to mention. http://opc4.kb.nl/DB=1/SET=27/TTL=7/START_WELCOME

It can be translated as: Als je je boeken middels de Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) toevoegd, kun je het desbetreffende boek ook zoeken op de site van de KB. Dit omdat de edities van een boek een apart aanvraagnummer hebben i.v.m. het verkrijgen van de juiste informatie. Het aanvraagnummer kan je dan in het Zoekveld invullen. De site van de Koninklijke Bibliotheek is: http://opc4.kb.nl/DB=1/SET=27/TTL=7/START_WELCOME

Page: Beheer jouw eigen domein (Master of your Domain) http://www.librarything.nl/tour/4
2nd sentence: ...omsalgen mb ...omslagen.

Page: Mijn profiel (Your Profile) http://www.librarything.nl/tour/6
3rd sentence: ...vind je verschillende "beklemmend gelijke" bibliotheken. mb ...vind je een aantal, bijna griezelig, vergelijkbare bibliotheken.
4rth sentence: ...Tijdgeest (Zeitgeist)
The word Tijdgeest isn't highlighted in blue and isn't conected with http://www.librarything.nl/zeitgeist. From the page Mijn profiel (Your Profile) it isn't possible to go directly to http://www.librarything.nl/zeitgeist

Page: In de buurt (Local) http://www.librarything.nl/tour/8
3rd sentence: ..., en ontdekken wie van dezelfde plekken als jou houdt. mb ..., en ontdekken wie er nog meer van dezelfde plekken zoals jij houdt.

Page: Een korte introductie op LibraryThing (A short introduction to LibraryThing) http://www.librarything.nl/quickstart.php
Word lid:
.... mailadres mb ....e-mailadres. This concerns the whole page.
....email mb ....e-mailadres. This concerns the whole page.

Aanraders:
...We bevelen aan om je email in te voeren als je je aanmeldt, .... mb ....We bevelen je aan om je e-mailadres in te voeren wanneer je je aanmeldt, ...
....Als je geen email verstrekt, zal het moeilijk voor je zijn een verloren wachtwoord terug te vinden. .... mb ... Als je geen e-mailadres verstrekt, zal het moeilijk voor jou zijn om je verloren wachtwoord terug te vinden. ...
... Je kan kiezen om ... mb ... Je kan ervoor kiezen om...
... waar niemand ze kan zien.... mb .... waar niemand deze kan zien....
Links-Wolken:
... LibraryThing wachtwoorden, auteurs ... mb ... LibraryThing trefwoorden, auteurs ....
Profiel:
...je blijft op de hoogte met de boeken ... mb ...je blijft op de hoogte van de boeken ...
... andere leden aan je lijst met vriendenlijst toe te voegen of aan je lijst met ... mb ... andere leden aan je vriendenlijst toe te voegen, aan je lijst met ...
Mijn boeken-aanraders:
... A kleine blauwe driehoek vershcijnt naast de naam van de kolom ... mb ... Een kleine blauwe driehoek verschijnt naast de naam van de kolom ....
Werk pagina:
.... Elk boek dat je aan je bilbiotheek toevoegt verbindt je via ... mb .... Elk boek dat je aan je bilbiotheek toevoegt, verbind je via ...
Discussie:
... Je kan ook discussies vinden die boeken noemen die opgenomen zijn in jouw LibraryThing bibliotheek... mb ... Je kan ook discussies vinden over de boeken die gecatalogiseerd zijn in jouw LibraryThing bibliotheek...
Tijdgeest:
LibraryThing brengt alle soorten van infroamtie bij elkaar ... mb LibraryThing brengt alle soorten van informatie bij elkaar ..

I don't know how to fix this by myself, so when somebody knows how to do this job, please feel free to do so in order to get the right text.

79> There's some way for automated way for the users to translate stuff. Someone who knows what I'm talking about needs to point you to the instructions for that. Anyone?

I use both the .nl and .com site. It works very easy to go to the discussion pages f.e to post a message to the combination thread, or searching for the same writer etc.
I have no problems reading other languages but I only can write in Dutch, Norwegian and Englisch(?)

To ad my books I've used the following sources: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Vlaamse Centrale Catalogus, BIBSYS (Norway), National Library of Norway (Norbok), amazon.com, Bol-Bruna, Rijksmuseum Research Library, Tehnische Universiteit Delft (This must be Technische Universiteit Delft), NEBIS (Switzerland), Deichmanske Bibliotek.

In order to combine works with different languages I use sites to translated sentences
Then it is even possible to combine Hungarian, Polish, Czech, Spanish, Greek, Turkish and Italian books.

It only takes some time to invest, to improve the LT site.

The main reason I don't use the Norwegian site is the translations. I get why they are often clunky and flat-out wrong, and the things proposed earlier might take care of much of that, but even under the best of guidelines, I suspect a user-translated site will have some rough edges.

Not that it matters that much, since even if it was perfectly translated, I'll always choose English over Bokmål. :P

>Message 59: geitebukkeskjegg
The main site has the most and best data because everybody can contribute. That's immediatedly understandable and acceptable. While "The English site has the most and the best" starts to get under your skin after a while.

This is true. Series statistics is one source of annoyance (it shows only the series that are added in the main site). I can live without it but it is like a grain of sand in my shoe.

>75 timspalding:
SUB1 by SUB2.

This doesn't much help when your language is inflectional. We don't use prepositions. Here is one example:

in English:
# Member Recommendations
# For Anneli
# For Anneli's books
# By Anneli

this is how it should be in Finnish:
# Jäsenten suositukset
# Annelille
# Annelin kirjoille
# Annelin suositukset

And this is the current (poor) translation. Because it is not possible to use proper infections for the word Anneli one has to add the word jäsen (member) and inflect that word:
# Jäsenten suositukset
# Jäsenelle Anneli
# Jäsenen Anneli kirjoille
# Jäsenen Anneli tekemät

84> So, if I'm reading this right, what you'd LIKE to be able to do is enter these for translations:

<SUB1>lle
<SUB1>n kirjoille
<SUB1>n suositukset

Is the problem that it won't be "lle" or "n" if the name ends in a consonant instead of a vowel? Are there other issues?

>85 brightcopy:

Not that simple, I'm afraid. Here are some examples of Finnish genitive forms (latter is the genitive form):

Anneli - Annelin
Pirkko - Pirkon
Aristoteles - Aristoteleen
Helsinki - Helsingin
Meikäläinen - Meikäläisen
Ruutu - Ruudun
Tammi - Tammen
Teräs - Teräksen

86> Are their rules depending on suffix of the original name, or is it semi-random?

Another thought occurs. Why not translate them to the Finnish equivalents of:

# Member Recommendations
# For you
# For your books
# By you

?

Nevermind. Forgot this page can be arrived at via your own username or others. So it's not always about you.

Does anyone know if someone's already written a library that will do Finnish (or better, all languages) inflections? It seems like the sort of problem that someone would have encountered already...

Okay, I don't know Finnish but I know or have studied about a dozen other languages with inflections--Greek, Latin, Italian, German, Turkish etc.

With all of the ones I've studied except for Turkish, there are nouns you don't inflect. So, for example, Greek and Latin inflect Jesus, Mary and Galilee--they started out looking like Greek or Latin words or have been drawn into the system--but doesn't inflect Bethlehem, Gabriel, Elisabeth, Nazareth, etc. Looking at a German book site I see the same thing. Names in German are declinable, and von should take the dative. But the sites aren't attempting to decline any of the authors I see, German or not.

This technique is fine--indeed should be standard--for all Indo-European and Semitic languages we cover. It would also work for Chinese, which doesn't inflect. That leaves Japanese, Turkish, Finnish and Maori, I think.

I gather Finnish is more like Turkish, which I've also studied, in being agglutinative and having vowel harmony. Agglutination, adding stuff on the end where other languages might use prepositions or other constructions, shouldn't be a problem by itself. But vowel harmony is, since it changes what gets added on. For example, if you're going "to" Ankara we change the word to Ankaraya, but if you're going to Edirne it's Edirneye. In some cases there are four potential vowels to choose from.

From looking at Turkish book sites it seems to me they're simply avoiding constructions that require such a choice. They're not saying X by Y, but just putting them on different lines. I wonder, therefore, if we might decide that "by" in Turkish and Finnish is simply ":"?

It would, I think, be possible to get it right most of the time in Turkish, which is completely regular in spelling. The exception would be foreign names. Early on Turkish wrote those out phonetically (eg., Çörçil for Churchill) but they don't do that now.

So, Anelli, how does Facebook do it?

(Tim - it's Anneli)

v

>90 timspalding:: how does Facebook do it?

Without any regard towards its users, but financially great - probably. Or wasn't that what you meant?

Seriously though, this is one of the great things about LT : sure, it's your business, and I totally respect that you have to call all the shots, but we users are able to communicate with you.

So really, it seems like it's feeling to me that this isn't really a problem with LT's translations or translation systems, but of the language itself (in terms of working well in software). So if LT was actually a Finnish-only site, they'd still have these problems. They'd still have to either come up with an awkward phrase, a way that was less clear than it would be in other languages, or just give up and ditch the feature altogether because there's no way they could write a piece of code that could make an equivalent to "For Anneli's books" because the language itself isn't amenable to that kind of software.

I'm not really sure there's all that much you can do about it. I think the fact that you're trying to translate FROM English, which does have a good way to do it, makes you realize what you're lacking. And I think the fact that you probably never get to take advantages of the ways in which Finnish makes it easier to say something than English does (due to the fact that the people who program the site are limited by English).

I too don't think LT can go about vowel harmonizing--with some consonant changing too, apparently. But I want to talk this through to see other ways of doing it.

The key question to ask, specifically for Finnish, is "has someone already solved this?" This seems interesting:

http://search.cpan.org/~viljun/Lingua-FI-Inflect-0.02/Inflect.pm

94> I too don't think LT can go about vowel harmonizing--with some consonant changing too, apparently.

With all respect to all parties, I really don't believe it's possible to do more than "barely passable" translations working on the word/phrase level. Especially when the translation is done by amateurs (us users, yours truly included).

One can accept barely passable as good enough.

Or one can do separate page design by languages. (Which also includes putting limitations on global functionality).

Or one can limit the translated contents to simple keywords (the Wikipedia model).

Or one can keep it all in one language (the Facebook model).

Personally I prefer the "one language" model.

But "barely passable" is ok, as long it's use and limits are understood and accepted by the users. As an aid for crossing language barriers it's very fine. When it's existence is used as an argument for data segregation, it stinks.

>96 geitebukkeskjegg:
But "barely passable" is ok, as long it's use and limits are understood and accepted by the users.

I agree. I wouldn't try to find ways to solve wovel harmonizing or anything that complicated. Even the professional translation programs cannot always translate Finnish properly. Maybe the simplest way to make some of the translations better is to make the more prominent expressions with prepositions translatable as whole expressions without the SUB-thingies. Difficult to say what is simple because I don't really know how the translations system works.

The artless language in translations may repel some people but I think that there are more important things to solve than bad translations if you want to make this site truly international. The book related things are most important. Changes in CK system are a good start.

One book related thing that comes to mind is book covers. If I look the series page in Finnish the covers are from English books although there are Finnish covers for those books in LT. Example series Belgarionin taru:
http://fi.librarything.com/series/Belgarionin+taru

Same problem with work pages:
http://fi.librarything.com/work/11208/
Title is in Finnish, but the cover is from an English book.

^When I click on that work page, I get the Finnish cover. Baffling! Although it may be because I have this book in my library, with the Finnish cover?

However, I agree on the series pages cover matter. I guess the idea is that the "dominant cover" (dominant being determined by which language has the majority of this book) takes precedence but from my perspective these kind of things are what makes a "non-dominant language" feel a bit inferior. And it's really inconsistant having the series and the titles in Finnish (or in other-than-English in this case) but the covers in another language.

>99 Talvitar:
If I have the Finnish book in my collection and I am on the Finnish site I get the Finnish cover. At least if I have added the cover myself.

I wonder if the system knows which cover belongs to which translation. Maybe that is the problem.

With all respect to all parties, I really don't believe it's possible to do more than "barely passable" translations working on the word/phrase level

Okay, but it's not a word/phrase. It can be--and is largely--every meaningful chunk of text. These chunks can be annotated to make things more clear.

Or one can keep it all in one language (the Facebook model).

That isn't the Facebook model. Facebook uses the LibraryThing model.

Title is in Finnish, but the cover is from an English book.

Right. That's fixable--at least sometimes.

If I have the Finnish book in my collection and I am on the Finnish site I get the Finnish cover. At least if I have added the cover myself.

YOu always get your own cover, but if you don't it fails to a majority cover.

I wonder, if translating this:

# Member Recommendations
# For Anneli
# For Anneli's books
# By Anneli

to this (in Finnish)

# Member Recommendations
# Anneli
# For member's books
# By member

wouldn't be a good solution in this case. Seems like it might be more awkward than the English version, but is it more awkward than the current translation?

Another thing that could be done for non-English sites that hasn't been mentioned is to fix canonical names for authors so that a change in one language does not affect all other languages. Seeing English transliterations of Russian names and English forms of Latin and Greek names does not look very professional on a book site.

I use the English site because though I have studied a number of languages, I'm not fluent in any of them.

I have a large collection of Japanese books on LT and I do find that the script sometimes causes a bit of trouble. It's much, much better than it was when I first joined, but searching for strings still gives weird results sometimes, and they are different results depending on whether I search within my catalog. (For example, searching 花 (flower) pulls up a mere 15 results in the main site search, all of which include only the individual character on its own followed by a space, but within my own catalog it pulls up my series of 花ざかりの君たちへ volumes as well as everything else it should). So I can't really search for a work on LT unless I remember the whole title.

>101 timspalding: Okay, but it's not a word/phrase. It can be--and is largely--every meaningful chunk of text.

Well, in LibraryThing's case it's most often a meaningful chunk of text 1 to 3 words long. You can expand on it in translation, but that soon results in a cluttered page. Mind you, I'm not saying it's bad. I'm saying I don't believe this apporach can produce translations with the level of perfection discussed above. And I'm saying the translateable pages is a good thing when used as an extra service for non-English users, not when they're used as an argument for keeping us out of the English users hair (off the main page). I actually believe you're doing a great job, and that LT is now moving in the right direction (shared CK being a prime example).

That isn't the Facebook model.

I should visit Facebook more often. No, I should not.

Maybe it would also help - a bit - if translators would be allowed to digress a bit when necessay for clarification.

I remember a discussion about the CK blurbers field for the Dutch site (http://www.librarything.com/topic/71431). The problem is that there is simply no word for them in Dutch, and the English word isn't commonly understood either.

Currently the translation is "Auteur van flaptekst/aanprijzing" (Author of flap* text/recommendation), which is better than it used to be but still far from perfect.

(*flap strictly being the part of a cover turned back inwards - common on dustcovers , but sometimes seen on paperbacks - that often gets used for short author biographies, and sometimes for blurbs as well.)

106: Good point.

Also, define separate translations for every use of one-word phrases. Words that can have several meanings in one language can't necessarily be used the same way in another.

104> That seems to be a problem with the new search algorithms - it did a lot better before it got changed. I asked about it back when search was improved, and it seems that it's a huge processing problem to allow the search to check individual characters, but the coding they use might be updated soon to allow it (they based it on code found elsewhere).

But with Japanese and Chinese and I'm not sure what other languages that don't use spaces between words: it's a really big problem.

103> Another thing that could be done for non-English sites that hasn't been mentioned is to fix canonical names for authors so that a change in one language does not affect all other languages.

I thought that bug had been fixed a while ago. At least I couldn't find it in the open bugs for CK issues.

>109 jjwilson61:
I don't think it ever was entered as a bug. And I just checked, and it was still showing the last entered name. I think the issue was that LT does not have any mechanism at all for displaying different author names in different languages.

109> No, it was just deferred:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/99402

It took us a good while to even argue Tim around to calling it a sort of a bug. He really wanted to just call it a feature that was working as intended. I assume this is because it would be a lot of work to fix. ;)

>111 brightcopy:

Yes, Tim writes: "The system does not acknowledge people are named different things in different countries. We could add that feature, but it's a feature. The system wasn't designed for it."

What a pity if that cannot be fixed! What is the point then having CK field for canonical names in different language sites?

112> That's the middle of the thread. If you read more you'll see he did finally start to see that it's a bit of a buggy behavior.

Back to the (side) topic, what did you think about my suggestion in 102? Would that be a reasonable thing to see for that translation?

>90 timspalding: You may have to add Korean to that list (of Japanese, Turkish, Finnish and Maori), but I'm not sure.

>113 brightcopy:
Back to the (side) topic, what did you think about my suggestion in 102? Would that be a reasonable thing to see for that translation?

Do you mean that the member's name should be deleted from those expressions? But aren't those recommendations for a certain member and not just for any member? "Recommendations for John" or "Recommendations for a/the member". What about these: "Recommendations by John" and "Recommendations by a/the member".

115> Yes, that's why the member's name would still be there, but the context of the next two lines would be given by the member's name listing:

So here's the old versus the new Finnish way (only you'd need to translate those phrases to Finnish now):



Does that make sense? It would be a way to avoid the postpositions but keep the specific member name nearby for context.

>116 brightcopy:
Yes, it might work. At least in this case.

And for the sake of the example and the original subject of how you could make the non-English sites more comfortable, here's two more. The first is if you used the colon as suggested earlier (bleh) and the second is if you did some changes to the ENTIRE site so that it'd be easier to translate in other languages where this is problematic:

I'm regularly using the Catalan site and taking a look at some English Talk just to get an idea of what is going on in the "main site".

So this thread is really great for me. Here is my wishlist:

1. Just now in the Catalan LibraryThing group someone is proposing to ask for a small great improvement: to get Catalan in the short list of languages. We are obliged to open the more languages list once and once again to correctly incorporate the language of lots of our books.

2. I agree with #10 . I would like to choose my time zone in order to get the better from the Local information.

3. I would like to get a complete principal url like www.librarything.cat in order to be able to point to the Catalan interface of LibraryThing from the outside world. It's unpleasant to be forced to such links like these.

4. Take better care of diacritics. It's horrible how letters disappear from your loved authors' names. And the hard work to search all kind of combinations to put into only one package which can be called author's page.

Well, I love LibraryThing, I spend lots of hours here, I've seen recently many improvements and I will welcome some on the international side of the platform.

119>

get Catalan in the short list of languages. We are obliged to open the more languages list once and once again to correctly incorporate the language of lots of our books.

How about if the short list of languages always included the language of the site you were on? I'd be surprised if I were the first to suggest such a thing.

3. I would like to get a complete principal url like www.librarything.cat in order to be able to point to the Catalan interface of LibraryThing from the outside world. It's unpleasant to be forced to such links like these.

Does http://cat.librarything.com/ cause some sort of problems? I have to admit I have no idea what that site you linked to is.

ETA: It could also include the "Primary language" from your profile, which would be useful options that don't have their own site (e.g. Ukranian).

I think it would make a lot of sense to have *all* the languages that have an LT site in that short list.

One of the reasons I rarely use the BG site is that that series do not get shown in my catalog there - I have a bi-lingual library -- and the only way for a series to show up is either to stay on the main site or to recreate them on the BG site (which makes no sense when some of them are not even published in Bulgarian at all).

I guess I need to start working on that again but with the number of BG users - in most days it feels as if I am doing all the work just for myself...

What would make the site a bit more usable (at least for me) would be a per book language assignment - so when I look in my catalog and my book is in English, I see the English CK entries... (and the BG ones on the www site (ok.. maybe with an opt-in/opt-out so people can read my catalog))

Add to that Canonical names of Authors bug and the non-Latin-alphabet-based languages sites are in a really bad shape...

>120 brightcopy:
How about if the short list of languages always included the language of the site you were on?

Perfect solution!

3. Sorry, sorry! I looked for an image of the ill page and it disappeared. It seems this was fixed and I did'nt notice it. I'm very happy for this. Just forget my complain, please.

BTW the site I pointed to is the blog of the Catalan group of LibraryThing. And we like to have a page with all our bookawards listed and with links to LibraryThing.

>121 staffordcastle: short list should really be short list in order to make sense.

>123 gamoia:

Well - even if it is up to 30-40, it is still a short list... Or at least add the site language in the short list (Bulgarian is not in the short list on the Bulgarian site... which combined with the lack of Bulgarian sources makes adding any book quite hard) :)

>123 gamoia:

Since quite a few of the languages of LT are already in the short list, adding the missing ones would not make it all THAT much longer!

ETA: Okay, I just went and counted. There are 50 language sites, if one does not count Piratical and Thingamabrarian (the ideal langauge), neither of which have any books published in them (except The Pirate Dictionary, of course). All the short-listed languages have an LT site except Ancient Greek, so it would mean adding 29 more languages to the short list.

More elements from my wishlist:

5. I'm not sure if this still apply but I'm always introducing twice the information of bookawards, in Catalan site and in English site, in order to get them indexed and appearing in the statistics/mems page of my profile. Could this double task be avoid?

6. Would it be possible to tie covers with languages? And to show them accordingly to the site where you are?

I know the Amazon deal is very important for LibraryThing but Amazon does'nt provide quite any of the Catalan covers (and I guess from many other languages). So, for me these Amazon covers overall are really screaming out this is an English site.

Ops! I'm going to bed. It's time to sleep. Bye.

Excellent suggestions. I've been favoriting some I think are doable soon. I'll get back on this soon.

Oh, and if at all possible, allow something like setting a canonical name - depending on language of site - for tag pages. For example http://www.librarything.com/tag/Arquitetura+Moderna which includes Italian, Dutch, French, German and English expressions for "Modern Architecture". This must be confusing people.

My experiences as a non-English user are very similar to those described by Moloch in post # 69.

When I first came across LibraryThing I – being a German speaker – came to the German-language site. During my first brief look around I was astonished to see that they had a “Tag-Wolke” (= day cloud). The German word “Tag” means “day”. This puzzled me greatly especially as I couldn’t find a corresponding “night cloud”. When I clicked on the “day cloud” I found that it was a bunch of keywords and then indeed I understood that they meant the English “tag”, not the German “Tag” and had left it untranslated but capitalised it. Well, that was the moment when I said “How silly is that” and almost left and never came back. Luckily I tried the English-language mother-site and found it far superior to the German-language one. So I stayed here.

A few times I tried half-heartedly to help translating the German site but it is impossible to translate single words or phrases completely out of context. Some phrases are not shown at all on the corresponding translation pages and some are shown elsewhere. I soon gave it up, it was just too frustrating hopping here and there in search of a phrase and hopping back to see if you had translated it correctly or if it would pop up in another context which would require a different translation.

As for the improvement of the foreign-language LT versions I’m afraid I cannot offer much advice. The important point would be to use another system for translation. Users have to be able to see the context of the phrases/words they are expected to translate. And if the same phrase is used in different contexts on different pages you have to allow for different translations. If this is not possible it might be best to close down the other sites and concentrate on the English one.

The trouble is: English is a language with strongly reduced grammar – which makes it very easy to learn but which is less helpful when translating it piecemeal into grammatically more complex languages.

By the way, one of the main reasons I stayed here – apart from the good cataloging functionalities – was that I saw the boss personally communicate with the users – not just occasionally but frequently and very purposefully. In my opinion one of the greatest assets of LT is Tim and his way of building this site in close cooperation with the users.

Now we only need three more milestones to get an almost perfect site:
1. Author pages for co-authors.
2. Jettison the faulty Amazon data and create an independent LT database for publication data.
3. Fix import/export and allow exporting all fields

Just like Ravic, when I had my first look at a non-English LT-site I was rather puzzled by some of the strange or inconsistent translations. But as I liked the idea of having multiple language sites I nevertheless decided to stay, on the Dutch site that is. That was more than 2 years ago and I’m still (t)here.

Apart from the fact that I’m no longer convinced that it is possible to create a good and consistent translation with a group of people with different backgrounds (one fluent in English but sloppy in Dutch, one good in Dutch but not really understanding all the concepts of LT, etc. etc.) and different ideas about what a good translation should look like (formal vs. informal, literal vs. readable, etc.), here are some of my observations.

Part of the confusion and subsequent frustration, is created by the fact that the non-English sites are – I hate to say this – sometimes forgotten, indeed sub-sites. A few examples:

- The gender field in CK is not translated. Could this be one of the reasons why quite a lot of members on the Dutch site fill in the other CK-fields in English?
- WikiThing and all the discussions about concepts and features are in English. If you don’t understand English it must be very hard to really understand some of the LT-rules.
- The series statistics only give me those series that are on the English site, not the ones I (and many many others) created on the Dutch site.
- The guidelines for translating state: ‘Keep proper nouns’. As a consequence(?), at least at the Dutch site, all the examples using proper nouns are indeed not ‘translated’ (e.g. series description: Loeb Classical Library in stead of a familiar Dutch or Flemish example; Place of death or residence starting with ‘Boston, Massachusetts, USA’, in stead of Amsterdam … or Antwerpen …).
- Why show (and make us translate) messages about Early Reviewers if we cannot sign up? (accompanied by the sardonic ‘What did you win?’, taking me to the .com site.)
- As long as Barkingmatt (thank you, by the way) doesn’t post a message on the Combiners! group saying a proposed tag combination of an English tag and a Dutch tag is okay, there is a small change it will ever meet the threshold. Why should we propose any more combinations of non-English and English tags?

A last overall comment: the English site has moderation by Tim and the others, the non-English sites, well, lack moderation… (And I’m afraid even translation needs moderation.)

I’m not used to contributing to discussions on LT and I’m no longer used to writing in English, so please forgive me any mistakes and the length of this comment. (And yes, I will stay a member on the Dutch site. Because the idea is good.)

130> A last overall comment: the English site has moderation by Tim and the others, the non-English sites, well, lacks moderation… (And I’m afraid even translation needs moderation.)

I'm sure the LT staff have thought of this (though there's not much they can do about it), but it's something that hadn't occurred to me. Things get heated here on the English side from time to time, and it does take Tim to step in and at least give advice ("I don't think you should be flagging that message"). I can't imagine what it would be like on one of these other site if a problem user decided to make their home there. And I'm sure it could be a potential target to spammers as well (we do see the spam hunters trying to tackle non-English spammers from time to time and it's tricky business).

It's a really difficult problem to solve for a company the size of LT. As far as I know, they simply do not have the money to be able to hire someone to cover most of those language sites. Even if they could get someone to volunteer to be an unpaid shepherd of each language site, how in the world would they know if those people were doing a good job?

>Even if they could get someone to volunteer to be an unpaid shepherd of each language site, how in the world would they know if those people were doing a good job?

By listening what the rest of this language-site population has to say. :) If there are issues, they will get reported somehow.

132> Right, but how do you judge whether a person is being bossy versus just doing their "job"? Some members on this site are already incredibly touchy whenever a regular user disagrees with them or states their views on how a certain feature is supposed to work. I wouldn't want the headache of trying to sort out a "he said, she said" argument when I can't actually read what each of them had actually said (including such important things as tone and idiom).

You just choose to trust people -- or leave them non-moderated (but allowing an easy way for spam and insults to be reported and someone that acts on them). Everyone here is supposed to be an adult (13+ officially but that is good enough).

131> I agree. I'm sure Tim has thought about this. And of course I understand LT can't hire someone for all of the non-English sites. I just wrote the above as a member who deliberately chose to use the Dutch site, is not used to giving his opion, but thinks he has some answers/observations that could be interesting for him. What LT is trying is worthwhile: bringing together people who love books & reading from all over the world. The multiple sites definitely can contribute to that idea. But. There are still some problems. And if I can help...

For what it's worth: I'm (almost) addicted to LT, so, all I wrote was like some advise to family I’ve never met.

There's a problem of separation vs. integration. Two examples:

Talk: I'm German, but I'm using the English site. I didn't miss the occasional German thread until a few days ago - when I logged in to the German site and saw the option "Auf Deutsch" (in German) on the German talk page. On the English talk page, you don't even know that there's talk in other languages. There should be a way to switch languages and/or to select multiple languages.

Catalogs: If I look at a catalog of (say) an Italian user, I would like to see the English and German titles of his books (if available), too. Yes, I could go to the editions page of each of his works, but that's not practical for a large catalog in a language I don't understand. I'd propose a display field "title in your languages".

The latter suggestion is already implemented. By choosing to display "Work:Title and Author", you get the name of the book in the language you are currently using.

137> Thanks!

The first time I heard about LT, or found it in a list of cataloging sites, or however I found out about it (I can't remember), it was the main site I found. If there had been an automatic, IP-based, popup asking whether I would have wanted to use the Swedish site, I might have looked at it, but would probably not have opted for it, because I want a good and complete localisation. And with amateur translators doing a bit here and a bit there when they have the time, and no institutionalised proofreading, you're not getting that.

I've been using the main site all these years, only occasionally logging in to the Swedish site, until one day a couple of weeks ago I decided to start using the Swedish site so I could see when there was new text to localise. (I'm a professional translator who is currently working as a technical writer, but I really like translating so I've been on a translating binge the last week, just for fun.)

Although there are hiccoughs, translating from English to Swedish is quite easy -- the languages are so similar --, so the Swedish site looks pretty good. On the other hand, using an English site comes naturally to most Swedes under the age of 50, so I'm not sure having a Swedish site matters very much, but there are probably some members who wouldn't be here if there wasn't one.

Hmm, I think the conclusion is: I'm not sure there is much more needed to make users of the Swedish site happy at the moment, but also that we on the Swedish site are rather fortunate in that.

When the Winter Olympics came to Salt Lake City in 2002, you could buy a little pin that said "Je parle français" or "Ich spreche Deutch," etc., and then wear it to the events or around town to show that you were happy to offer assistance in that language.

Maybe we could implement some sort of similar system on LT so that people who aren't comfortable in English can have an easy way of seeing who else is around that they can talk to or get help from in another language. (I'm picturing something like a little flag icon on the profile page and at the top of each talk message, the latter only displaying for users who'd opted to see what other members speak a particular language. Also, I suppose you'd have to have multiple flag options for each language, to avoid political nightmares.)

message 79

Why does nobody wants to do some copy and paste work, in order to get the translation on the Dutch tour pages right. I don't know how to do this.

http://www.librarything.nl/tour/1 etc.

It's already served on a plate. All you need to do, is eat it to get a higher number of translations.

>141 guurtjesboekenkast:

Look at the top of the page. Do you see the link "Vertaal!"? Click on it. Find the needed texts, update them and press the button at the bottom. That's it. That's how you can translate any page.

I would do it but I do not know Dutch at all and prefer not to edit things I do not understand :)

> 141 Thanks AnnieMod

I've just edited the translations. It took a while, but now I can say: it looks just fine.

> 79

Page: Mijn profiel (Your Profile)
http://www.librarything.nl/tour/6 (http://www.librarything.com/tour/6)

4rth sentence: ...Tijdgeest (Zeitgeist)
The word Tijdgeest isn't highlighted in blue and isn't conected with http://www.librarything.nl/zeitgeist. From the page Mijn profiel (Your Profile) it isn't possible to go directly to http://www.librarything.nl/zeitgeist

I somebody able to get this right? Please do so

> 79

Page: Mijn profiel (Your Profile)
http://www.librarything.nl/tour/6 (http://www.librarything.com/tour/6)

4rth sentence: ...Tijdgeest (Zeitgeist)
The word Tijdgeest isn't highlighted in blue and isn't conected with http://www.librarything.nl/zeitgeist. From the page Mijn profiel (Your Profile) it isn't possible to go directly to http://www.librarything.nl/zeitgeist

I somebody able to get this right? Please do so

Might be best to move this and further discussions of specific translations to a separate thread, including bug reports for specific phrases that aren't highlighted. I think this thread is more about general things that can be done to make the other-language sites feel at home, which includes translation but more in general terms.

Or it might be that since we are already at message 146, this thread is dead for that purpose. :D

Translation groups:
Translating LibraryThing? (General Talk)

There are also language specific translations groups, e.g. Dutch:
LibraryThing in het Nederlands

> 146 and 147

I've placed the message under Translating Librarything

Thanks for the message

See thegillou's bug here:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/109155

Seems that this is something that requires attention in the make-non-English-members more comfortable department.

How about a way to record non-US library codes?

http://www.librarything.com/topic/110225

Just an extra sortable, searchable field would make a big difference.

150> And would be of use to not just non-US people, but is something that US people have clamored for for quite a while (million and one uses, that).

Of course, what MarthaJeanne really wants (as per the other thread) is a non-US equivalent to Dewey or LC. Those fields have some extra functionality that might be good to replicate for non-US folks.

Well, no, MarthaJeanenne does't want an equivalent to Dewey or LC. They excist! What some of us non-US users would like is a way to enter such here on LT.

152> Errr.. that's actually what I said. I'm not saying she wants an equivalent SYSTEM to be built, I'm saying she wants equivalents FIELDS to be built in LT to enter them into.

Sorry, forgot to add the smiley.

The real issue here is, as I'm sure you would agree, that there are various systems around in this world - and that LT doesn't support the non-US systems.

Right. That's why I when MarthaJeanne brought it up in the other thread, I suggested she come here to point it out. I'm not sure how it got so complicated. X)

The Finnish public libraries (and some other libraries as well) use Finnish Public Libraries Classification which is available here (link to English version):
http://ykl.kirjastot.fi/en-GB/

It is published in Finnish, Swedish and English.

If there was a general classification field, everybody could put what classification they want in that field.

156> If there was a general classification field, everybody could put what classification they want in that field.

Well, yes and no. The system should probably know "this value is given in classification system A", "this value is given in classification system B", so the different systems don't get muddled all up together.

Fwiw, I've got the alternate book piles working on a number of the languages—French, Swedish, Dutch, Macedonian, Welsh and Czech. Other non-English sites get the "polyglot" one. I'll do the rest soon, but I'm away from my computer in Boston for a while, and taking a lot of personal days to help my family.

I have a bunch of messages above to go through and either react to or respond to.

Eh, that's not the polyglot bookpile. That's a Dutch bookpile mistakenly identified as polyglot.

I will make a Bulgarian one when I am back home in a few months or when I manage to have at least 10 books in Bulgarian here...

I'm not sure that there is enough demand for each of several systems to make it worth keeping them separate the way LC and Dewey are.

What I was thinking of is an 'other' classification field, and (Pony alert) a choice as to which classification field shows up on the book details page when I look at my books.

Native Dutch speaker confirming #159.

>156 Anneli: / 157: Yes, it would be good to be able to specify which system you're using. Here in the Netherlands we have NBC for academic libraries, SISO for public libraries, and NUR for the booktrade (but many non-pro "librarians" would use that because this code is usually printed next to the ISBN).

Personally I think they have overcomplicated things by introducing three different systems, but...

In Sweden, the national library association SAB has a classification system that all public and most university libraries have used since the early 20th century; however, the Royal Library went over to Dewey a couple of years ago and the public libraries have said they will follow suite for practical reasons.

But all Swedish booklovers are so used to the SAB classification that it will only be librarians and future generations that will learn Dewey here.

>157 brightcopy:
The system should probably know "this value is given in classification system A", "this value is given in classification system B", so the different systems don't get muddled all up together.

But there are dozens if not hundreds of different classification systems in the world. It would be unpractical to have different fields for all of them. Where people want to use those classifications? If only in their own library, there is no need for many fields.

The field could also be like MARC 21 field 084. There is a subfield for the classification and a subfield for the source of the classification system, e.g.
084 $a 014 $2 frbnpnav

165> What I'm thinking is possibly something like author roles. You enter your value and choose an existing classification or enter your own. As people add them, the staff goes through and checks to see which ones people are using and adds them to the default list.

There are some downsides to this, of course. To give an English example, you might have a bunch of people enter "dewy" instead of "Dewey". (This is a made-up example, as Dewey has its own field already and that probably won't change.) And what if people leave the classification system field blank? But I think these downsides might be minor.

You could also possibly have this field incorporate Dewey and LC and use a "green text" approach, such that e.g. if your book has a Dewey entry and you haven't cleared or entered something different in the classification value/system, it fills it in with your Dewey number and "Dewey" for the classification system.

Eh, that's not the polyglot bookpile. That's a Dutch bookpile mistakenly identified as polyglot.

You are entirely right. I'm not sure whose mistake it is. I'm a little hampered for working only on my laptop—sans Photoshop, etc. I'll work on it when I'm back at home.

If find the classification-system stuff fascinating. I want to start adding some of the others--SAB, for example--and also giving people opportunity to translate what we have. I'll pipe up latter.

Today I browsed my books in LT and came across something that has been bothering me a bit but I have forgotten it: the Finnish subject headings with the letters ä and ö:
muinaisjÀÀnnökset (should be muinaisjäännökset)
kï¿œasityï¿œoperinne (should be käsityöperinne)
kuolemanjèalkeinen elèamèa (should be kuolemanjälkeinen elämä

The Finnish subject headings don't show on the work pages but they show in people's own libraries (if they choose to view the subject field which I usually don't).

Same problem with Swedish subject headings:
Skönlitteratur (should be skönlitteratur) and probably many other non-English languages as well.

Unfortunatly it is not possible to edit subject headings.

Good catch. You should enter a bug report, too.