Non-English Titles

[jpt]

Hi, Hector

I don't know if you still recall an exchange of e-mails we had around the second half of August last-year, which helped lead to 2.46-2.47-2.48-2.49 release versions.
Just to tell you I'm glad to talk to you again and I still appreciate all the program's qualities.
In fact, I'm just starting to use it (better late than never!) to register my personal film and documentary collection (or should I say Coollection ?).

But, and there's always a big but - which of course is not necessarily a bad thing -, I must imperatively point your attention to the following: I demand the possibility of having the film title in my own language (in this case portuguese, but the same would, of course be truthfull to any other language - even if it's original title is not portuguese).

As far as I know the present logic of film titles in this software is as follows: English Title [Alternate English Title] <Original>. I understand the intent to keep a unique standard to all the eventual searches. That's absolutely fine by me.

What I propose would never affect that fundamental principle, and that is: English Title [Alternate English Title] <Original> *Country Title*, with the indication of the international identifying country codes. Of course, this fourth segment would be the program user's input, each time it was considered necessary, and I would suggest you incorporated it also in your already vast database, as a further enrichment of that same base - and a useful tool for later users.

I know this is a long message already, but let me just give you an example:
- I added the fine french movie "La Reine Margot" to My Coollection
- My Title now looks like this: Queen Margot <La> (1994)
- If I was Given the Option to add my country's film title, it would look this way: Queen Margot <La> (1994) *A Rainha Margot - PT*. . Not a big change, is it ? Still a fine one, wouldn't you agree ?

I guess now the ball is on your court! Thanks for reading!

jpt
Lisboa, Portugal

[(cool) Hector]

Hi jpt ! Welcome back

I'm well aware of the problem you describe.

The current database file is named "english.movies.dat" because it's intended for english users. And I know that has some drawbacks for non-english users.

My plan is, and has always been, to release databases in other languages. For instance, there'll be a "portuguese.movies.dat".

Inside the portuguese movie database, everything will be in Portuguese (the descriptions, etc...), and the titles will look like this:

portuguese title [portuguese aka] [portuguese aka 2] <original title>

The program will have a language setting. Currently you're using English because there's no other option. But the day Portuguese becomes available, you'll switch to it, and immediatly the program interface will be in Portuguese, and the program will use the portuguese database (it's possible because your personal data is language-independant).

In addition to the language setting, there'll also be a locality setting. For instance, if you set the language to "English", you'll have the choice between the localies "UK", "US", "Canada", "Australia" and "South Africa". The locality setting is used for the price information. For instance, if you set the locality to "Australia", the program will display prices of australian stores only, with prices expressed in australian dollar.

As you can see, it's quite an ambitious plan. Lots of work for us, and zero work for our users (our philosophy).

The first non-english databases will become available later this year.

Last edited by (cool) Hector on Mon Mar 08, 2010 3:43 pm, edited 2 times in total.

[(cool) Hector]

I don't know if you still recall an exchange of e-mails we had around the second half of August last-year, which helped lead to 2.46-2.47-2.48-2.49 release versions.

Yes, I still have those messages. Thanks again for your help !

[jpt]

Hi again Hector,

Very pleased to learn you're doing your best to satisfy the interests and concerns of users outside the anglo-american world.
And, in fact that's a huge task, and I fully understand that to make it good you must take a coniderable amount of time.

Yet, I can't stop wonder if, transitorily, the form in which we add our own movies to our collection couldn'n contain two extra (and simple) fields:
1.
Title for your country:
2.
Country: (this one including an already-made list of the countries and territories of the world for the user to choose)

These suggested fields' information would only affect the users display of it's own collection, never affecting other areas of the software, not to mention other users.

But you know better than me if this is technically possible or even worth it.

Just one last, but very important request: when you make a portuguese version, please dont mix European and African portuguese with Brazil's portuguese: I can assure you that would be disastrous for non-brazilian users.
I don't want to appear too harsh on our brazilian brothers but the fact is they have a special touch to turn serious films' titles into jokes.

Of course we still love them! For their joy, their music, their women and their national football team (which, unfortunately will be unmercifully beaten by Portugal in the next South Africa World Cup).

Last but not least, thanks a lot for your previous quick answer.

jpt
Lisboa, Portugal

[(cool) Hector]

Yet, I can't stop wonder if, transitorily, the form in which we add our own movies to our collection couldn'n contain two extra (and simple) fields:
1.
Title for your country:
2.
Country: (this one including an already-made list of the countries and territories of the world for the user to choose)

We'll soon add the film's country of origin to the database.

We'll also add the name of the character played by the actor, and the dates of birth/death of persons (in fact, the birth/death are already in the database, I just need to make the program display them).

But you know better than me if this is technically possible or even worth it.

Technically, everything's possible. If I won't add the "title for your country" field, it's for organizational reasons. It would be a waste of my time to work on this feature only to remove it some time later. Also, it would be a waste of the time of our users.

Building a perfect portuguese database is a lot of work. But I'll use shortcuts to release earlier. For instance, the first release will take all the descriptions from the english database. And progressively, we'll replace the english descriptions by portuguese descriptions, probably thanks to users contribution.

please dont mix European and African portuguese with Brazil's portuguese: I can assure you that would be disastrous for non-brazilian users.

I wasn't aware of that, thank you very much for the info. Do we really need to create a separate brazilian database ? Isn't it ok if the brazilian title is simply considered as a portuguese aka ?

portuguese title [brazilian title] <original title>

A portuguese user would probably be happy to see how a movie is called in Brazil, and vice-versa.

[jpt]

portuguese title [brazilian title] <original>

A portuguese user would probably be happy to see how a movie is called in Brazil, and vice-versa.

That's a fine idea, Hector. I confess I hadn't thought of that.

Still, make sure Portugal's title must always take precedence over Brazil's.
No hint of neo-colonialism there. And I know there are 175 million brazilians, while we are less than 11 million. Still, even brazilian academics consider Lisboa's and Coimbra's as the standard for portuguese language.

You might think I'm making a big deal out of this. But just look at the example presented in this message's subject... Shouldn't I be worried?

One last thing: when you need volunteers to translate/adapt film descriptions to Portuguese, I'm making myself available to contribute.

[(cool) Hector]

Still, make sure Portugal's title must always take precedence over Brazil's.
No hint of neo-colonialism there. And I know there are 175 million brazilians, while we are less than 11 million.

To play it fair with brazilian users, probably there should be a portuguese database AND a brazilian database.

Portuguese database => portuguese title [brazilian title] <original title>
Brazilian database => brazilian title [portuguese title] <original title>

And maybe we could also have a UK database, a US database, an australian database, etc...

One last thing: when you need volunteers to translate/adapt film descriptions to Portuguese, I'm making myself available to contribute.

Thank you very much !

We'll put in place a contribution system like we have now for picture contributions.
In the future, we'll accept more types of contributions
=> existing videos (poster and technical details), descriptions, translations, etc...

[(cool) Hector]

To play it fair with brazilian users, probably there should be a portuguese database AND a brazilian database.

Portuguese database => portuguese title [brazilian title] <original>
Brazilian database => brazilian title [portuguese title] <original>

And maybe we could also have a UK database, a US database, an australian database, etc...

In fact, there would be only one portuguese database file, and only one english database file.

But depending on the localization set by the user, the order of the akas would vary.

[(cool) Hector]

In fact, there would be only one portuguese database file, and only one english database file.

But depending on the localization set by the user, the order of the akas would vary.

Well, maybe it's not a good idea...

Are there a lot of differences between Portuguese and Brazilian ? Can there be a portuguese description, and a brazilian description ?

[jpt]

To play it fair with brazilian users, probably there should be a portuguese database AND a brazilian database.

Portuguese database => portuguese title [brazilian title] <original>
Brazilian database => brazilian title [portuguese title] <original>

In fact, there would be only one portuguese database file, and only one english database file.
But depending on the localization set by the user, the order of the akas would vary.

Well, maybe it's not a good idea...

Are there a lot of differences between Portuguese and Brazilian ? Can there be a portuguese description, and a brazilian description ?

We got a lot of brainstorm going on outhere but that's the way one reaches the best solutions, isn't it?

My humble opinion is the following:
#1. There's only one Portuguese language (no scholar or cultivated people in Brazil - or Portugal, for that matter - consistently defended the idea of a 'Brazilian language'; the same is valid for every other portuguese-speaking country).
#2. It is spoken by more than 250 million people all over the world:
2.1. Europe (Portugal and the northern iberian region of Galiza)
2.2. South America (Brazil and border regions of Suriname and Uruguai)
2.3. Africa (Angola, Mozambique, Cabo Verde, Guiné-Bissau, São Tomé e Príncipe; also border regions of Senegal, Guinea-Conakry and Equatorial Guinea)
2.4 Asia (East Timor, Macau; to a less extent also in the Indian cities of Goa, Damão e Diu, parts of Sri Lanka and the enclave of Malaca).
#3. Portuguese-speaking communities reaching dozens of millions of individuals are scattered all over the world, especially in: France, United States, Canada, Australia, Venezuela, Germany, Great-Britain, Ireland, Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxemburg, Spain, Andorra, Uruguai, Argentina, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Arab Countries, etc.

All these people speak the same language. There's no doubt that, even with their regional variations, they are perfectly able to understand one another.

Sometimes (as it happens with English, Spanish or French) there are bigger differences within each country than from a country to another.

I mean, a middle-class citizen from Lisboa might feel more at ease talking to a middle-class citizen from Rio than, perhaps, with a natural from the Azores islands.
And, in turn, that middle-class individual from Rio de Janeiro might feel more confortable in a conversation with a portuguese from Lisboa than with a Northeastern brazilian born on the shores of the Amazon River.

As a matter a fact, I might add, an orthographic agreement between the Eight Countries of Portuguese Official Language has just been put to practice in order to reduce to the minimum possible the differences in writing.
Of course there will subsist some variations in specific expressions. Yet, in my view, not sufficient to break the general coherence of the language. (Just one example: a road toll booth is called "portagem" in Portugal and "pedágio" in Brazil.) But 99% of wording and gramatics is virtually identical - and even more when you compare Portugal to African Countries of Portuguese Language. Differences are much more detectable in the way people speak the languague (accent and rythm) than in writing itself.

So, to wrap up a quite long message, I would tend to support the idea of having a single portuguese database file, with the akas varying according to the users' localization.

See you around.

[(cool) Hector]

I would tend to support the idea of having a single portuguese database file, with the akas varying according to the users' localization.

Agreed, thank you very much