Deborah,

It seems like the fundamental issue here is that two expressions are
involved and that the relationship between the two is what's really
notable.  A 546 to describe linguistic aspects of one expression or the
other would keep all language info in same field rather than mixing aspects
of two different expressions on one record.  However, "Translated from the
German." is really a stealth link to another expression, repeating
infomation about a related expression.  Should preferably "Translation of
<title>" be a 580 if 765 not adequate for the job?  Asking the question of
where the note is describing the expression in question or a related one
makes the question easier to approach.

Dick

At 09:20 AM 4/22/2004, you wrote:
>The 2nd ed. of my book "Cataloging with AACR2 and MARC21" is about to go to
>print and wouldn't you know that someone at my last workshop just raised a
>question that I hope the collective wisdom of this group can answer before it
>is too late to get it into the book.
>
>Which field should we use for a Translation note: 546 or 500?
>
>AACR 1.7B2 says to give a note for the "language of the item and/or
>tanslation or adaptation"
>
>MARC21 says that field 546 "contains a textual note giving the language(s) of
>the described materials." However, no example of a translation note appears
>under 546. Instead an example "Translated from the German" appears under 500.
>
>The OCLC Bib Formats manual says under 500: "Use for the following kinds of
>notes: Translation notes"
>
>I do not understand, however, why we would use a 500 rather than keeping all
>language notes under 546. So I did a Notes keyword search on "translated
>from" in the LC OPAC and have found that some of the recent records give such
>a note in the 546 and some give it in the 500.
>
>Could someone please clarify whether we *really* should use 500 rather than
>546 for a translation note, and if so, what the rationale would be for doing
>so?
>
>Thanks very much,
>Deborah
>
>Deborah Fritz
>The MARC of Quality
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>www.marcofquality.com

Dick R. Miller
Head of Technical Services & Systems Librarian
Lane Medical Library, L109
Stanford University Medical Center
Stanford, CA 94305-5123
(650) 725-4615 (work)
(650) 725-7471 (fax)
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