[open-bibliography] Extract Translations from WorldCat?

Mon Oct 22 13:41:28 UTC 2012

Hello, dear Open Bibliography group,

[I sent the following to the ScraperWiki list yesterday and David Jones
has suggested I try you - saying: "I think some people there have done
some WorldCat hacking". But come to think of it, there might be better
sources than WorldCat for the data I'm interested in?]

Here's a major challenge - possibly new (?): scrape out of WorldCat all
the items which are translations, and link them with all the items which
are translated. 

Doing this would (1) help anyone find any translations of a work or find
the original of any translation (= a tool which performs as an interface
to WorldCat data) and (2) build a dynamic dataset representing global
cultural flows (= a stats tool).

Data about WorldCat items includes OCLC number, title, date, publisher,
language, edition/format, personal names under 'author' (sometimes also
'responsibility'), sometimes 'other titles', 'notes' etc. - the fields
vary depending on the library catalogue or other source they came from.

In the case of translations, the fact that a work is a translation is
often only shown in the title field:  '... translated from ... by ...'
can appear.  So we might have to start by collating all items with such
phrases (in all languages) in the title field, and extracting names.
Translator names will be key links.

An 'other title', esp if it is in a different language (but that won't
be marked), is probably an original title (but might be the title of a
translation...).  

WorldCat entries are cross-referenced to ''all editions and formats' -
and that includes multiple copies, differing editions, and translations,
but translations are only linked IF they have the same title as the
original (or partly the same). So the English translation of Kristeva's
"Hannah Arendt" biography is linked to the Japanese and Polish
translations, but not to the French original. 

Index Translationum, started in 1932 by the League of Nations, now run
by UNESCO, keeps a record of all the world's literary translations. Its
records could be used to cross-check links, perhaps?

Just an idea..!

Tom

Dr Tom Cheesman

Reader in German 

College of Arts and Humanities

Swansea University

SA2 8PP

T: +44 (0)1792 205678 x 4030

M: (+)(0)7736408064

Institution: www.swansea.ac.uk/staff/academic/ArtsHumanities/cheesmant/ 

Version Variation: www.delightedbeauty.org and
www.delightedbeauty.org/vvv 

Asylum: www.swanseabassgroup.org

Publishing: www.lulu.com/hafan

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