[mb-style] RFC: Transliterations/translations, again!

[Rod Begbie]

On 8/9/06, Nikki <nikki@...> wrote:
> Also, this proposal doesn't split the releases, the releases are already
> split. This proposal links them back together (although until the NGS, we
> can't link all the IDs together, but we'll have a much easier job in doing
> so with this relationship).

Fairynuff.  If they're already there, then you're right, linking them
with ARs is the best way to go to help us clean up in the future.

"Virtual" is still a bad name for the release type, though.  In fact,
can you explain the reason for the new release type, because I'm not
sure I've seen it.

Thanks,

Rod.

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[Simon Reinhardt]

Chris Bransden wrote:

> On 09/08/06, Stefan Kestenholz <keschte@...> wrote:
>> > unless i'm mistaken, this is relationship is not for actual
>> > translations of the tracks/releases themselves, but the track/release
>> > *tracklistings* only.
>>
>> Please answer me this: What is the legimation of a user translated
>> entries
>> in the database, if it wasn't released in this form? I have seen no
>> objections against the ideas of creating translations in the database, I
>> think this should be adressed first.
>
> IMO this AR is needed regardless. there are plenty of albums that have
> one tracklisting in one country, and another in another - note I am
> talking about the *text* on the tracklisitng, nothing else.

Thanks for being realistic. :)
Although you seem to be for merging them, you understand that, since we have them and they won't just go away, we need to handle them somehow. And to everyone: when discussing relationship types, please always keep in mind that they are essential for NGS. The AR data will be used excessively to do the initial data transformation to the next schema [1].

> what i was saying is I don't think it's intended for actual
> translations of the *songs* themselves (eg a band doing a song in
> their native german, and then releasing an version with re-recorded
> english lyrics).

Which is exactly what Nikki's initial mail said. :)

Simon (Shepard)

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[Brian G]

so? they're basically the same thing where one is literal and one isn't.

if they're two different things than why even lump them together under a word that is Bad?
why not (again) call things what they are rather than forcing new meanings to words that don't apply..
create "translation" and "transliteration"

[Robert Kaye]

On Aug 9, 2006, at 12:43 PM, Rod Begbie wrote:

> On 8/9/06, Brian G. <brian@...> wrote:
>> is "virtual" really the best name for the release type?
>> rather than using a word and forcing a new meaning why not call it  
>> what it
>> really is.. a translation.
>> i don't think mb needs anymore confusing BadTerminology
>
> Agreed, agreed and agreed.
>
> I'm uneasy about this proposal, because it splits the data about the
> exact same release.  PUIDs, ARs, DiscIDs etc are tied to one release.

Agreed -- we'd be adding tons of confusing duplication if we started  
adding these to BOTH releases. No good.

> Encouraging this kind of split is A Bad Idea, in my eyes.  Either do
> this with a DB schema-change, or not at all, IMO.

That's pretty much where I stand too.

We recently agreed that MusicBrainz' primary focus is to create a  
database of music information. Tagger users desires are secondary and  
tools should tweak the data to suit the tagger users. Its is not ok  
for tagger users to dictate the DB structure. This fits issue falls  
into the same category.

Transliterations/translations must be done RIGHT at the schema level.  
I'm currently trying to raise some money to get started working on  
NGS...

Shepard says:
> Listen to Don: rules follow practice. With tons and tons of  
> translations and transliterations already being in the database you  
> cannot just go and make a guideline not to allow that. It's  
> unrealistic.

Rules that follow from bad practices are bad rules.

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--ruaok      Somewhere in Texas a village is *still* missing its idiot.

Robert Kaye     --     rob@...     --    http://mayhem-chaos.net



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[Gecks]

On 09/08/06, Simon Reinhardt <simon.reinhardt@...> wrote:
> Chris Bransden wrote:
> > IMO this AR is needed regardless. there are plenty of albums that have
> > one tracklisting in one country, and another in another - note I am
> > talking about the *text* on the tracklisitng, nothing else.
>
> Thanks for being realistic. :)
> Although you seem to be for merging them, you understand that, since we have them and they won't just go away, we need to handle them somehow.

well, i still don't think i'm being understood so i will re-iterate :)
there are in existance releases which have different translations of
the tracklistings - nothing virtual about them. eg:
http://www.discogs.com/release/656463 (original release)
http://www.discogs.com/release/683846 (US version with translated titles)
note that the lyrical content on both is exactly the same.

regarding 'virtual' translations (ie done by users, not printed on
sleeves) - i do agree they should be linked, as they're obviously in
the DB, however i don't think they fit here under the current system,
as they're not physical releases. if there was a 'virtual' release
type, then yes that would make them much more acceptable. however, i
don't think this affects the need for this AR, as there are legit
printed releases that need the relationship, nevermind 'virtual' ones
:)

> > what i was saying is I don't think it's intended for actual
> > translations of the *songs* themselves (eg a band doing a song in
> > their native german, and then releasing an version with re-recorded
> > english lyrics).
>
> Which is exactly what Nikki's initial mail said. :)

i know, see the post i was replying to original to see why i went down
that route :)

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[Simon Reinhardt]

Robert Kaye wrote:
> Shepard says:
>> Listen to Don: rules follow practice. With tons and tons of
>> translations and transliterations already being in the database you
>> cannot just go and make a guideline not to allow that. It's unrealistic.
>
> Rules that follow from bad practices are bad rules.

Well then we need to change them into good practices. But you cannot just create a rule to forbid transliterations and translations, that won't work.

Whether the current practices are good or not and how to change them is one topic that surely needs to be addressed and that needs long-term solutions.
But that's not what this thread is about. This thread is about providing means that will help to transform the current solution into a long-term solution later. And it's not even hard to implement. I think this can't be bad.

Simon (Shepard)

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[Nikki-12]

On Wed, Aug 09, 2006 at 04:34:13PM -0400, Rod Begbie wrote:
> "Virtual" is still a bad name for the release type, though.  In fact,
> can you explain the reason for the new release type, because I'm not
> sure I've seen it.

It's a way of splitting real track listings from "virtual" ones (i.e.
unofficial translations and transliterations, etc.). When we have greater
control over what's shown on the artist page (artist page redesign) we'll
then be able to hide these, and just see the *real* discography.

Also, when we can merge track listings, virtual ones can be merged or
proposed for a merge automatically.

--Nikki

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[Nikki-12]

On Wed, Aug 09, 2006 at 09:47:26PM +0100, Chris Bransden wrote:
> regarding 'virtual' translations (ie done by users, not printed on
> sleeves) - i do agree they should be linked, as they're obviously in the
> DB, however i don't think they fit here under the current system, as
> they're not physical releases. if there was a 'virtual' release type,
> then yes that would make them much more acceptable. however, i don't
> think this affects the need for this AR, as there are legit printed
> releases that need the relationship, nevermind 'virtual' ones

And since mo has agreed to add the 'virtual' type to his attribute
restructuring anyway, that's taken care of too.

--Nikki

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[Nikki-12]

On Wed, Aug 09, 2006 at 01:22:32PM -0700, Brian G. wrote:
> that seems to me like a translation problem, not a unicode problem.  you
> want Picard to translate. ok.  it's not a "Unicode tagging issues" it's a
> lack of translation feature Picard (which tags - hence "tagging") can
> currently deal with unicode just fine AFAICT

Just removing all Unicode characters doesn't work for albums completely in
other scripts (e.g. Greek, Chinese). Yes, Picard can remove all the "bad"
characters, but it can't do so in a way which leaves the data in a usuable
state. I'm not entirely sure what happens if you set Picard to write Latin1
tags, but I'm sure it doesn't leave people with usable metadata for Chinese
releases.

--Nikki

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[keschte]

Well then we need to change them into good practices. But you cannot just create a rule to forbid transliterations and translations, that won't work.

 

 

this issue was mostly ignored, or deemed not as important as it looks now. I wasn't aware that there are thousands of releases in the database which follow this practice (thats your claim, i haven't investigated), i thought it was only a minority. Afaik, and from what robert has written, this wasn't clear for him, too. Anyway, its time that this is dealt with now, but i'm pretty convinced that the current way (ie how DiscID ans fingerprints are attached) is the worst possible solution, and should be sorted out asap.

 

--keschte
 

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[keschte]

> IMO this AR is needed regardless. there are plenty of albums that have
> one tracklisting in one country, and another in another - note I am
> talking about the *text* on the tracklisitng, nothing else.

Thanks for being realistic. :)

 

 

yep, but he talks about a different issue. Since we talked with donredman about the camps that are created, this is exactly such a statement. You thank him for being realistic, what does this tell how you think about people who think this isn't the right solution? Please try not to communicate on this level, it doesn't help.

 

regards, keschte

 

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[Simon Reinhardt]

Stefan Kestenholz wrote:

>
>      > IMO this AR is needed regardless. there are plenty of albums that
>     have
>      > one tracklisting in one country, and another in another - note I am
>      > talking about the *text* on the tracklisitng, nothing else.
>
>     Thanks for being realistic. :)
>
>  
>  
> yep, but he talks about a different issue. Since we talked with
> donredman about the camps that are created, this is exactly such a
> statement. You thank him for being realistic, what does this tell how
> you think about people who think this isn't the right solution? Please
> try not to communicate on this level, it doesn't help.

You could as well have answered to

> Listen to Don: rules follow practice. With tons and tons of translations and transliterations already being in the database you cannot just go and make a guideline not to allow that. It's unrealistic.

because there I say it's unrealistic. It is my opinion that how you think about the releases is unrealistic (I didn't relealise you didn't realise there are so many though ;) ). What's the problem with me having this opinion? I don't see your problem at the moment. I'm not creating camps. I'm telling you people my opinion. You confuse me. :/

Simon (Shepard)

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[Robert Kaye]

On Aug 9, 2006, at 1:56 PM, Simon Reinhardt wrote:

> Robert Kaye wrote:
>> Shepard says:
>>> Listen to Don: rules follow practice. With tons and tons of  
>>> translations and transliterations already being in the database  
>>> you cannot just go and make a guideline not to allow that. It's  
>>> unrealistic.
>> Rules that follow from bad practices are bad rules.
>
> Well then we need to change them into good practices. But you  
> cannot just create a rule to forbid transliterations and  
> translations, that won't work.
>
> Whether the current practices are good or not and how to change  
> them is one topic that surely needs to be addressed and that needs  
> long-term solutions.
> But that's not what this thread is about. This thread is about  
> providing means that will help to transform the current solution  
> into a long-term solution later. And it's not even hard to  
> implement. I think this can't be bad.

Fair enough, I can appreciate that. What rules to we adopt for having  
people attach PUIDs/TRMs/discids to these duplicate releases?

--

--ruaok      Somewhere in Texas a village is *still* missing its idiot.

Robert Kaye     --     rob@...     --    http://mayhem-chaos.net



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[Nikki-12]

On Wed, Aug 09, 2006 at 01:38:12PM -0700, Robert Kaye wrote:
> >I'm uneasy about this proposal, because it splits the data about the
> >exact same release.  PUIDs, ARs, DiscIDs etc are tied to one release.
>
> Agreed -- we'd be adding tons of confusing duplication if we started  
> adding these to BOTH releases. No good.

Too late. It's been happening for ages (over 2000 albums marked as
Japanese, Latin alone). I am not proposing a way of doing transliterations
and translations here, I'm trying to provide the links between our current
data which will benefit us later when we have schema support for these.

> We recently agreed that MusicBrainz' primary focus is to create a  
> database of music information. Tagger users desires are secondary and  
> tools should tweak the data to suit the tagger users. Its is not ok  
> for tagger users to dictate the DB structure. This fits issue falls  
> into the same category.

While I do agree with this, I feel that if we ban transliterations and
translations, we're not doing ourselves any favours.

Firstly, we'll be alienating a large proportion of the users who listen to
foreign music, and they aren't going to contribute, come back or recommend
us to their friends if all we do is piss them off -- and that's exactly
what we will do if we force everyone to use scripts they can't read. I
would *love* to do automatic transliteration, but for many languages it's
anywhere from not easy to impossible.

Secondly, all of this data can be used later with NGS. We would be *stupid*
to delete all the transliterations and translations right now.

> Transliterations/translations must be done RIGHT at the schema level.  
> I'm currently trying to raise some money to get started working on  
> NGS...

I agree that the proper way to do it is at the schema level, but with no
current support, people have done the only thing they feel they can.

...didn't you say the tagger users pay the bills?

> Rules that follow from bad practices are bad rules.

Maybe so, but rules that go completely against current practise will be
hard to enforce.

--Nikki

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[Brian G]

if you didn't want discussion on your proposal (which indeed contains the creation of "virtual" as a release type) than you perhaps should not have requested comments.

measure twice, cut once
-Brian

Nikki wrote:

On Wed, Aug 09, 2006 at 01:37:00PM -0700, Brian G. wrote:
> so? they're basically the same thing where one is literal and one isn't.
>
> if they're two different things than why even lump them together under a
> word that is Bad?  why not (again) call things what they are rather than
> forcing new meanings to words that don't apply..  create "translation"
> and "transliteration"

My proposal is about the relationship, it's not really concerned with the
wording used for the release attribute for the translations and
transliterations -- that's just the direction I feel we should go after
this. If that's your only complaint, could it at least wait until we reach
the step where we talk about actually adding this attribute?

--Nikki

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[Nikki-12]

On Wed, Aug 09, 2006 at 03:22:06PM -0700, Brian G. wrote:
> if you didn't want discussion on your proposal (which indeed contains the
> creation of "virtual" as a release type) than you perhaps should not have
> requested comments.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't comment, but I'm trying to keep this
moving along as the idea has been being tossed around for over a year. The
exact naming of the attribute doesn't need to be decided before we
implement the relationship, so I would appreciate it if we can discuss that
further when we get to it.

--Nikki

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[Brian G]

we're here.

[Robert Kaye]

On Aug 9, 2006, at 2:50 PM, Nikki wrote:
> While I do agree with this, I feel that if we ban transliterations and
> translations, we're not doing ourselves any favours.

>
> Secondly, all of this data can be used later with NGS. We would be  
> *stupid*
> to delete all the transliterations and translations right now.

I never suggested that we ought to get rid of them. I am mainly  
concerned about making this an approved practice.

> ...didn't you say the tagger users pay the bills?

They do, and I want to support them. But that does not change the  
fact that our primary purpose is a music encyclopedia and a tagging  
system second. But, income is increasingly coming from other sources  
these days -- which I welcome wholeheartedly.

>> Rules that follow from bad practices are bad rules.
>
> Maybe so, but rules that go completely against current practise  
> will be
> hard to enforce.

Can't argue that either.

--

--ruaok      Somewhere in Texas a village is *still* missing its idiot.

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[Arturus Magi]

On 8/9/06, Chris Bransden <chris@...> wrote:

> On 09/08/06, Arturus Magi <sailorleo@...> wrote:
> > On 8/8/06, Oleg Rowaa[SR13] V. Volkov <mb.rowaasr13@...> wrote:
> > I think we may want two sets of these: one for virtuals and one for
> > 'real's.  Real translations may be released simultaneously, and might
> > not have a distinct 'original' version.
> >
> > (I can only think of one particular instance of this, myself: a song
> > by a local band called Da Yoopers, who wrote a particular song
> > simultaneously in English and Finnish.)
>
> unless i'm mistaken, this is relationship is not for actual
> translations of the tracks/releases themselves, but the track/release
> *tracklistings* only.
>

The song is literally both English and Finnish, one right after the
other..  The discs were released with one name or the other on the
label, with no actual distinction between them...including in the
process of ordering them (although I think the Finnish prints were
only released for the first few months, or so).

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