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-----Original Message-----
From: Karen Coyle <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:47:15 -0700

> Dan Matei wrote:
> >> Dan, I'm not sure what you are describing with:
> >>
> >>     
> >>> <title xml:lang="ru">
> >>> 	<value>Война и мир</value>
> >>> 	<transliteration standard="?">Voyna i mir</transliteration>
> >>> 	<translation xml:lang="en">
> >>> 		<value>War and Peace</value>
> >>> 		<transliteration standard="none"> Уор енб пеаке</transliteration>
> >>> 	</translation>
> >>> </title>
> >>>       
> >> Is this describing a book in hand that is in Russian?
> >>     

My intention was just to suggest a formalism (i.e. a markup) for the catalographic "identifiers", including titles. But 
the discussion about titles is interesting too.


> As far as I know, it isn't common in bibliographic databases, although 
> the scientific journal article case does exist. I don't know how 
> extensive it is. In music, there seem to be translations of titles, and 
> those are unrelated to the translation of the resource, at least for 
> those musical pieces without words.

Right. Also in the case of visual arts.

I see here two (sub)cases:

a) the title of the work is "original", i.e. attributed by the creator. In this case I dare to use <translation>, i.e. 
to "favour" the original language.

Example (frbr:work):

<title xml:lang="de">
	<value>Der Tod und das Mädchen</value>
	<translation xml:lang="en">Death and the Maiden</translation>
</title>

(AFAIK it's Schubert's title.)

 
b) the title the work is not attributed by the creator. In this case, I would treat equally all the languages.

Example (frbr:work): http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lady_with_unicorn_by_Rafael_Santi.jpg

<title>
	<version xml:lang="it">Ritratto di dama con liocorno</version>
	<version xml:lang="en">Portrait of Young Woman with Unicorn</version>
	<version xml:lang="fr">Portrait d'une jeune femme avec la licorne</version>
</title>
<title>Portrait de Madalena Strozzi</title>
<title>
	<version xml:lang="en">Lady with unicorn</version>
	<version xml:lang="fr">La Dame à la licorne</version>
	<version xml:lang="it">Dama con liocorno</version>
</title>



> With textual works, in general one has the translated title only when 
> one has a translation of the resource. So it's not so much that the 
> title has been translated but the whole thing has, making it a 
> considerably different beast, IMO. At that point, it makes sense to me 
> to identify it as the title of the English translation or of the Spanish 
> translation, which isn't the same as a translation of the title.

I agree.

> 
> While I can see coding a translated title where that is the case, I'm 
> basically not sure what it means to identify the language of a title 
> (rather than the language of the text). There are dozens of books with 
> the title "Marcel Proust" in a number of different languages. What is 
> the language of those titles? 

It is language independent :-) (But transliteration still makes sense.)

On the other hand, UNIMARC has in 101 (LANGUAGE OF THE ITEM):

$g Language of Title Proper if Not First Language of Text, Soundtrack, etc.

Example (the Sienkiewicz's novel):

<title xml:lang="la">Quo Vadis</title>

for a text in Polish.

So, my point is: it could be useful to have a complex content model for the <title> element, and the rules should 
govern how to (ab)use that model.

> kc

Dan Matei