On cataloguing foreign languages DVDs
I will not start by claiming I am the best of cataloguers, far from it, every week on Tuesday morning I receive my MARC error report with all the cataloguing mistakes I have done during the week...
Nevertheless, I enjoy cataloguing but my special interest goes to films. Foreign films. And I catalogue a lot of those at the moment.
We are in our second year of our EUROCAP project which I mentioned before in a post last year and here at the Association of University Language Centre conference.
Basically the aim of the study is to see whether language learners make progress if they watch foreign films with same-language subtitles.
Purchasing
Purchasing this collection was easy for some languages, a nightmare for some other. Germany for example, does not offer often subtitles despite European legislation for the hard of hearing people. Spain is the exact opposite: many new films have subtitles in Spanish, and they are colour coded (depending on who is talking). French and Italy do not do too badly either. For chosing the right stuff (I wanted a good mix of popular films and more intellectual films and also television series) a good few websites were a great help, such as cinematographe for the best Italian films of the year. Groups on Facebook also helped me find good television series as with Vidéothécaires! for French.
Language yes, but which one?
On a cataloguing point of view, this raises a few questions. Of course we have our codes in field 041 for example FRE for French, GER for German, ITA for Italian etc... but similarly to English, there are a lot of variant... I remember going to the cinema to see Fury, a recent American (USA) film and translating some of the dialogue back into British English for my English friend who could not understand everything.
As a French-native speaker, I will understand the French of France, mostly, unless it is using too much slang. If I watch a film like Laurence anyways, from French speaking Canada, there will be moments when I will understand nothing.
The Spanish speaking world is huge and will have many different influences in it, the language of Argentina for example, sounds like Spanish spoken with an Italian accent for example in the film El perro (know in the English world as Bombón el perro)
So it is important, in cataloguing to try to be as precise as possible for the language in field 546
so for Laurence anyways, one could state French language (Canada), for El perro Spanish language (Argentina).
But how far can we go there ? A film like La Haine, set in the suburbs of France, is spoken in colloquial French, not the kind you learn at school. What do you put in your cataloguing record ?
For cataloguing DVDs, the Internet Movie Database is a great help but they tend to add all languages spoken in a film, even if it is only a few words. For example, the film Mesrine (first part) states that the film is in French, English, Arabic and Spanish. Arabic is spoken but for a very short time not enough to count as a dialogue. There are other examples such as the very famous L'auberge espagnole (one of the library's favourite films) the story of Xavier, a French ERASMUS student in Barcelona where he shares a house with others from all over Europe. Some languages are spoken long enough to be taken into account, the university teacher who teaches in Catalan for example, some others, like Danish, are not spoken for long enough. Should they be mentioned or not ?
Sign Languages...
Another question was raised further during the EUROCAP project. I already had this issue before with a Russian film called Страна глухих (country of the Deaf) set in a fictional deaf crime underworld in Moscow. The Russian sign language is quite used throughout the film.
Similarly, one of France's biggest success of 2014 was La famille Bélier the story of a young girl interpreting everything for her deaf parents and brother and then again, there are real dialogues in sign language.
SGN is the 041 field code for all sign languages.
Though the Russian sign language is from the French sign language family (thank you wikipedia) I really do not think they are mutually comprehensible. So each language has its own sign language and there is just one code. So would it be possible to add the ISO codes for these languages ?
It is difficult when one if one of many to catalogue DVDs at Oxford University to know what to do sometimes and the best cataloguing will come from watching the film. Of course, it is not feasable to do this for all films, so checking the Internet Movie Database or other relevant databases (for example AlloCiné surprisingly good sometimes for Russian films), watching the trailer and possibily extracts on youtube, will definitely help your cataloguing standards.
Audio-description...
Something else I have noticed, mostly with Spanish DVDs purchased. They have been by far the best to answer the needs of people with disabilities: not only do they provide Spanish subtitles for people with auditive disabilities (and colour coded subtitles per character in the film) they also often offer audio-description for people with visual disabilities. I add this to my field 546 obviously but do I add a genre in field 655? Or would that be too vague and not language specific enough? (I have seen for example "Video recordings for people with visual disabilities.") or do I add this in field 041? If yes, which subfield?
In short...
It is great to have so many options for being as specific as possible for languages. However, some efforts could be make, especially for people with visual or auditive disabilities. If countries like Spain and in fewer quantities France and Italy are capable of offering same-language subtitles and audio-description, surely we should follow suit.
Nevertheless, I enjoy cataloguing but my special interest goes to films. Foreign films. And I catalogue a lot of those at the moment.
We are in our second year of our EUROCAP project which I mentioned before in a post last year and here at the Association of University Language Centre conference.
Basically the aim of the study is to see whether language learners make progress if they watch foreign films with same-language subtitles.
Purchasing
Purchasing this collection was easy for some languages, a nightmare for some other. Germany for example, does not offer often subtitles despite European legislation for the hard of hearing people. Spain is the exact opposite: many new films have subtitles in Spanish, and they are colour coded (depending on who is talking). French and Italy do not do too badly either. For chosing the right stuff (I wanted a good mix of popular films and more intellectual films and also television series) a good few websites were a great help, such as cinematographe for the best Italian films of the year. Groups on Facebook also helped me find good television series as with Vidéothécaires! for French.
Language yes, but which one?
On a cataloguing point of view, this raises a few questions. Of course we have our codes in field 041 for example FRE for French, GER for German, ITA for Italian etc... but similarly to English, there are a lot of variant... I remember going to the cinema to see Fury, a recent American (USA) film and translating some of the dialogue back into British English for my English friend who could not understand everything.
As a French-native speaker, I will understand the French of France, mostly, unless it is using too much slang. If I watch a film like Laurence anyways, from French speaking Canada, there will be moments when I will understand nothing.
The Spanish speaking world is huge and will have many different influences in it, the language of Argentina for example, sounds like Spanish spoken with an Italian accent for example in the film El perro (know in the English world as Bombón el perro)
So it is important, in cataloguing to try to be as precise as possible for the language in field 546
so for Laurence anyways, one could state French language (Canada), for El perro Spanish language (Argentina).
But how far can we go there ? A film like La Haine, set in the suburbs of France, is spoken in colloquial French, not the kind you learn at school. What do you put in your cataloguing record ?
For cataloguing DVDs, the Internet Movie Database is a great help but they tend to add all languages spoken in a film, even if it is only a few words. For example, the film Mesrine (first part) states that the film is in French, English, Arabic and Spanish. Arabic is spoken but for a very short time not enough to count as a dialogue. There are other examples such as the very famous L'auberge espagnole (one of the library's favourite films) the story of Xavier, a French ERASMUS student in Barcelona where he shares a house with others from all over Europe. Some languages are spoken long enough to be taken into account, the university teacher who teaches in Catalan for example, some others, like Danish, are not spoken for long enough. Should they be mentioned or not ?
Sign Languages...
Another question was raised further during the EUROCAP project. I already had this issue before with a Russian film called Страна глухих (country of the Deaf) set in a fictional deaf crime underworld in Moscow. The Russian sign language is quite used throughout the film.
Similarly, one of France's biggest success of 2014 was La famille Bélier the story of a young girl interpreting everything for her deaf parents and brother and then again, there are real dialogues in sign language.
SGN is the 041 field code for all sign languages.
Though the Russian sign language is from the French sign language family (thank you wikipedia) I really do not think they are mutually comprehensible. So each language has its own sign language and there is just one code. So would it be possible to add the ISO codes for these languages ?
It is difficult when one if one of many to catalogue DVDs at Oxford University to know what to do sometimes and the best cataloguing will come from watching the film. Of course, it is not feasable to do this for all films, so checking the Internet Movie Database or other relevant databases (for example AlloCiné surprisingly good sometimes for Russian films), watching the trailer and possibily extracts on youtube, will definitely help your cataloguing standards.
Audio-description...
Something else I have noticed, mostly with Spanish DVDs purchased. They have been by far the best to answer the needs of people with disabilities: not only do they provide Spanish subtitles for people with auditive disabilities (and colour coded subtitles per character in the film) they also often offer audio-description for people with visual disabilities. I add this to my field 546 obviously but do I add a genre in field 655? Or would that be too vague and not language specific enough? (I have seen for example "Video recordings for people with visual disabilities.") or do I add this in field 041? If yes, which subfield?
In short...
It is great to have so many options for being as specific as possible for languages. However, some efforts could be make, especially for people with visual or auditive disabilities. If countries like Spain and in fewer quantities France and Italy are capable of offering same-language subtitles and audio-description, surely we should follow suit.
I add a comment from Bernadette O'Reilly, Catalogue Support Librarian, Bodleian Libraries.
ReplyDeleteI doubt whether there will be much further progress with differentiation of aids for people with disabilities in the MARC environment, because little work is being put into MARC. For instance, I see that ISO relies on extensions to differentiate between the various sign languages; but MARC depends on fixed-length codes. RDA does not have the same limitations, but at present it has only one element for ‘language of expression’ and so cannot differentiate in a machine-readable way between the languages used in a film, languages of subtitles and languages of other aids, e.g. voice-overs. Both MARC and RDA have elements for recording intended audience, and this could specify people with disabilities in a machine-readable way (using the ‘Demographic Group Terms’ thesaurus, which is currently under development), but that is not enough to clarify the nature of the aids offered. Very poor, really, that accessibility information has not been a priority in the development of new metadata models.
Using different colours for different speakers in subtitles is a great idea – so simple and practical.
Best wishes,
Bernadette
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Bernadette O'Reilly
Catalogue Support Librarian