Lost in Translation

[LibraryLady]

I'm not sure if this Lady was trying to make things easy for us, if she was of the opinion that a lowly Librarian would not know how to type a foreign title or if she just didn't quite grasp how our search engines work.

EL : Equivocal Lady

ME : Your friendly, neighborhood catalog jockey
*my thoughts*

EL : I'm looking for an article that doesn't seem to be on the shelf.

ME : OK. What's the title, please?

EL : The title would be "Between Ares and Aphrodite" by Iriarte and Gonzolez.

ME : *that's odd. I recognize the authors' names and they write exclusively in Spanish* Are you sure of that title Ma'am?

EL : Well, that would be the title in English.

Please, please, please. There is no way on God's Green Earth that I am going to find a book in Spanish by searching for an English translation of the title. We may not all be fluent in Spanish but any of us can type it.

Yes, we found the title. She just missed it on the shelf.

[Mr Hero]

This sounds like she used babelfish to figure out the name of the title. Ares and Aphrodite are the greek counter parts to the Roman gods Mars and Venus.

[LibraryLady]

Thank you for replying, Mr. Hero.

The problem isn't a literal, mechanical translation like Babelfish. The problem is the way bibliographical databases work. On something like WorldCat, you can configure the skin to give you entry cues and 'help' messages in most European and Asian languages. However, the translation will not apply to the records within the database. If you're looking for a title in any language, you must enter that title in the original language. Otherwise, you're going to get Zilch.