Translator in Calibre became Author in Kobo

[w00dent0p]

Happy New Year all.

Yesterday I ran into an issue with a particular book, side-loaded from Calibre to Kobo Libre 2, where the two authors shown in Calibre were as expected, but the author used by Kobo was the book's English translator.

Can anyone clarify the expected behaviour here? Is the translator name held in EPUB metadata, and is it visible/editable in Calibre? How did the translator name become the original author name on the Kobo? Is it Calibre or KoboTouchExtended or Kobo behaviour?

The only way I found to get Kobo to use the original author, was to run an EPUB to EPUB conversion in Calibre.

Thanks.

[theducks]

I expect it is all about the order of the metadata as entered in the book by the publisher.

Polish, not convert when possible (to avoid other changes). This embeds current Library metadata.

Some folk put the supporting staff into a custom 'authors' type column.
I simply put those roles inside (). Joe Wordsmith (trans), Irma Painter (illus)

[w00dent0p]

Actually I did the polish before transferring to Kobo.

I went back to the original EPUB as an experiment, checked that the only author showing in Calibre is 'Karin Smirnoff', while the author showing on the Kobo is 'Sarah Death'.

There's no mention of 'Sarah Death' as far as I can see, anywhere in Calibre exposed metadata. It was only by Googling that I realised that she's the English translator.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by w00dent0p

Actually I did the polish before transferring to Kobo.

I went back to the original EPUB as an experiment, checked that the only author showing in Calibre is 'Karin Smirnoff', while the author showing on the Kobo is 'Sarah Death'.

There's no mention of 'Sarah Death' as far as I can see, anywhere in Calibre exposed metadata. It was only by Googling that I realised that she's the English translator.

I've seen EPUBs with Translator defined as a Creator role, I've also seen it as a Contributor role. Open the original EPUB with Sigil and have a look with its metadata editor tool (for me that's F8).

I've no idea what a Kobo (or the various Kobo plugins) do with the MARC roles in Creator and Contributor metadata elements. And, the only way I know to get the MARC roles into an EPUB is by editing the opf file directly.

BR

[w00dent0p]

Thanks for the pointer to Sigil. I had a look at the original metadata, as follows:

Creator Sarah Death
Display Sequence 2
File As Death, Sarah
Id Attribute creator2
Role Translator
Scheme marc:relators
Creator Karin Smirnoff
File As Smirnoff, Karin
Id Attribute id
Role Author
Scheme marc:relators

It seems that somehow in the transfer from Calibre to Kobo, the Translator became the Author. Is there anything in this metadata that would explain such behaviour? Or what field(s) I should edit in Sigil, to work around the problem?

[w00dent0p]

Update, I just removed the section relating to the translator using Sigil.
That worked, in the sense that Kobo took Karin Smirnoff to be author.

But yeah, still questioning the unexpected choice of author when there were two creators.

[BetterRed]

My guess is that the Kobo doesn't honour the Display sequence. Try swapping the two dc:creator elements in the opf file, e.g. from this:

<dc:creator opf:role="trl" opf:file-as="Death, Sarah">Sarah Death</dc:creator>
<dc:creator opf:role="aut" opf:file-as="Smirnoff, Karin">Karin Smirnoff</dc:creator>

To this:

<dc:creator opf:role="aut" opf:file-as="Smirnoff, Karin">Karin Smirnoff</dc:creator>
<dc:creator opf:role="trl" opf:file-as="Death, Sarah">Sarah Death</dc:creator>

BR

[w00dent0p]

That didn't work, surprisingly.

[BetterRed]

I'm out of ideas, as I already said, about Kobo's I know diddlysquat. So, where are all the KOBO-xperts, there's normally at least half a dozen hereabouts.

BR

[theducks]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

I'm out of ideas, as I already said, about Kobo's I know diddlysquat. So, where are all the KOBO-xperts, there's normally at least half a dozen hereabouts.

BR

Sadly the best one died RIP

OP, did you REMOVE the old version from the Kobo first? Kobo does not refresh the DB entry on a simple update of a book.
Not tested: the Utilities does have Update Metadata and 100% Use the Update TOC if you add/remove book sections referenced by the (NCX) TOC

[w00dent0p]

Yes, I removed the old version from the Kobo each time.

Since the Kobo only seems to cope with one author anyway, I started wondering wouldn't it make sense to add some intelligence on the Calibre or plug-in side, to more intelligently choose which author to pass across to the .kepub? Or at least keep the author(s) exposed in Calibre and remove any other creators.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by w00dent0p

Yes, I removed the old version from the Kobo each time.

Since the Kobo only seems to cope with one author anyway, I started wondering wouldn't it make sense to add some intelligence on the Calibre or plug-in side, to more intelligently choose which author to pass across to the .kepub? Or at least keep the author(s) exposed in Calibre and remove any other creators.

Calibe works with what is in Calibre DB metadata, not the books

[w00dent0p]

But when polishing, don't the author(s) in Calibre metadata get put into the resulting epub/kepub?

All I'm suggesting is that one of these authors that we can see/edit (and not some other author that might exist in the original metadata) should make it across to the Kobo, since the Kobo doesn't seem very smart in choosing which author to use.

Anyway, I'll just use Sigil to remove extraneous creator entries, in case it happens again. Thanks for the support on this.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by w00dent0p

Since the Kobo only seems to cope with one author anyway, I started wondering wouldn't it make sense to add some intelligence on the Calibre or plug-in side, to more intelligently choose which author to pass across to the .kepub? Or at least keep the author(s) exposed in Calibre and remove any other creators.

It doesn't work this way for me for books sent by calibre to my Libra 2. I have lots of books with multiple authors where my L2 shows the book under each author. For example, a book with 2 authors shows both authors in the book details window, and in the authors list both authors for the book appear under each author.

IIRC getting this behavior required using a metadata plugboard for the kobo (kobotouch) that changes the way authors are formatted. All of my authors are in "LN, FN & LN2, FN2" format. The plugboard changes them to "FN LN, FN2 LN2". Here is the plugboard and the template I use in the plugboard.

program:
	comma = '';
	res = '';
	for author in $authors separator '&':
		res = strcat(res, comma, swap_around_comma(author));
		comma = ', '
	rof;
	res

[theducks]

I have no Plugboard for my Kobos.
My Library is Fn Ln

It just works. The Kobo indexes each Author (on the by Authors menu).
It shows by the order in Calibre (in the proper place for the name being indexed), but make additional entries for each Author listed.

Are you trying other ways to force this?