French-speaking albums. - Suggestions - Forums : Best Ever Albums

Norman Bates

Gender: Male
Age: 51
Location: Paris, France

Hello ! A little problem I've noticed with how the French titles are corrected on this site.

Here's an instance:

http://www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?a=32735

Here, I entered the correct spelling for the title: "La soupe à la grimace". It's been correcetd in: "La Soupe à La Grimace". Now in French, the rules are that only the first word of any title has a capital letter (except for names of course, and another few exceptions). Same goes for anything I have entered and that was in French: correctors seem to take it for granted that every language in the world works like English, with several capital letters in the title. French doesn't work like that; and generally, other languages should not be corrected as if the rules of English could be applied to the whole world.

I know it's no big deal, still, if we can do it right, why not do it? I would suggest that people only admin albums if they know the language, for instance.

19loveless91
mag. druž. inf

Yeah "someone" did it with one of the yugo albums too. I didn't correct it back, because I don't really mind it, but the next time I added a yugo album, I made sure to make the "capitalization" myself (even if it's technically wrong), so that the mofo won't do it again and get his mod points that easy. (Because, let's face it, that's why "they're" doing it)

videoheadcleaner
formerly Harkan

Gender: Male
Age: 38

Maybe a simple description on the admin album page that states non-English speaking (?) albums should follow with the appropriate wording and phrasing for album and song titles.

Norman Bates

Gender: Male
Age: 51
Location: Paris, France

harkan wrote:

Maybe a simple description on the admin album page that states non-English speaking (?) albums should follow with the appropriate wording and phrasing for album and song titles.

In most cases the title should be enough?

albummaster
Janitor

Gender: Male
Location: Spain
Site Admin

Norman Bates wrote:

correctors seem to take it for granted that every language in the world works like English, with several capital letters in the title. French doesn't work like that; and generally, other languages should not be corrected as if the rules of English could be applied to the whole world.

I know it's no big deal, still, if we can do it right, why not do it? I would suggest that people only admin albums if they know the language, for instance.

I can see both sides here. On the one hand it makes sense that the capitalisation should be governed by the rules of whatever language the album is in. On the other, it looks a bit inconsistent if different titles follow different language rules. Discogs use capitalised titles across the site and it looks tidy and easy to understand. AllMusic do the same thing. Other sites may be different. I'm not saying this to the close the debate, but just to put across why things are like they are.

Norman Bates

Gender: Male
Age: 51
Location: Paris, France

albummaster wrote:

I can see both sides here. On the one hand it makes sense that the capitalisation should be governed by the rules of whatever language the album is in. On the other, it looks a bit inconsistent if different titles follow different language rules. Discogs use capitalised titles across the site and it looks tidy and easy to understand. AllMusic do the same thing. Other sites may be different. I'm not saying this to the close the debate, but just to put across why things are like they are.

I don't see how it should look less "consistent" if the rules of the languages the titles are written in were followed. It should would look like the English language had annexed all others. How would you capitalize titles in Japanese? Translate them, then capitalize them, to be consistent?

Respecting all world languages with each its capitalizing peculiarity would be as consistent as capitalizing everything to make it look like English.

It's not the capitalizing that would look inconsistent or not. It's the languages that are not consistent.

As far as examples are concerned, RYM respects the rules of the different languages. For instance, the LP I was talking about earlier, for which the title and all song titles are rightly written:

http://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/bertrand_betsch/la_soupe_a_la_grimace/

I know I may sound like the ridiculous French nationalist resisting globalization (which I'm most definitely not), and I don't want to make it look so important, we can agree it's a detail. But for argument's sake I find your reasoning somewhat perverse, inasmuch as you'd be ready to erase language particulars to make the site look more "consistent". Weird choice, and paradoxical if you ask me.

RFNAPLES
Level 8

Gender: Male
Age: 75
Location: Durham, NC, USA

BEA doesn't follow capitalization rules of American English either. We don't, for instance, capitalize prepositions in titles unless at the beginning.
_________________
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Norman Bates

Gender: Male
Age: 51
Location: Paris, France

RFNAPLES wrote:

BEA doesn't follow capitalization rules of American English either. We don't, for instance, capitalize prepositions in titles unless at the beginning.

OK. Then the whole of my theory goes down the drain Smile

Anyway, the problem, albeit minor, still remains.

albummaster
Janitor

Gender: Male
Location: Spain
Site Admin

Norman Bates wrote:

I don't see how it should look less "consistent" if the rules of the languages the titles are written in were followed. It should would look like the English language had annexed all others. How would you capitalize titles in Japanese? Translate them, then capitalize them, to be consistent?

Cyrillic and other non-English alphabets are currently transliterated into the Latin alphabet to make them easy for people to search.

Norman Bates wrote:

Respecting all world languages with each its capitalizing peculiarity would be as consistent as capitalizing everything to make it look like English. It's not the capitalizing that would look inconsistent or not. It's the languages that are not consistent.

As far as examples are concerned, RYM respects the rules of the different languages.

I know I may sound like the ridiculous French nationalist resisting globalization (which I'm most definitely not), and I don't want to make it look so important, we can agree it's a detail. But for argument's sake I find your reasoning somewhat perverse, inasmuch as you'd be ready to erase language particulars to make the site look more "consistent". Weird choice, and paradoxical if you ask me.

RYM might be following a different approach (and that's up to them), but BEA is currently doing the same as Discogs and AllMusic (and Amazon.com, and iTunes, and a lot of other sites). BEA happens to only be in English, and so it is attempting to follow English language conventions, like other English language sites. So, it's not a "weird" choice, and I don't understand why it might be paradoxical. I think both choices are valid, and this comes down to being a style issue, with the overriding factor being that this is an English-language site.

With regards to some titles being inconsistent, that's up to the individual people that have updated the data. There is a moderation system where people can report incorrect edits.

Norman Bates

Gender: Male
Age: 51
Location: Paris, France

I think it's paradoxical because you want consistency, but will adopt a position that's not consistent with the language. It's not a "style" issue, it's down to whether you want your site to be accurate or not, regardless of the orther sites' inaccuracy to linguistic rules.

albummaster wrote:

With regards to some titles being inconsistent, that's up to the individual people that have updated the data.

Not at all! What I was saying was that these titles are corrected afterwards (see my first post)by people who don't speak one single word of the language. You know I generally update the data myself, and in proper French; when I come back it's been corrected.

I yield to the master of the premises, of course. But I want it noted that I think it is a mistake, and disrespectful of the languages' rules. Personally, I prefer not to enter any new French albums rather than see them wrongly written, or even corrected b y people who don't understand one single word of what they're writing. Plus I'd have thought accuracy to be the mot important factor on the site. Disappointing.

But as I said, it's not a big problem, it's a detail. It's a telling detail, but just a detail I guess. I'll be perfectly happy with putting English-only music on my charts.

Thanks for answering anyway.