"German" title Zheng He xia xi yang

Hello Michelle,

I'm German and I would know if there's a German release. And all other German martial arts movie fans would know it too. In fact there's no German person who ever heard about a German release. Except in IMDb.

The German movie database OFDb.de lists all kinds of mediums on which a movie has been released in Germany. Of course it's not complete, but there's not a single martial arts movie released in Germany that has not at least one medium entry in this database. If it was not released on a medium, then there's a cinema entry, or a German title. This movie has none:

https://ssl.ofdb.de/film/161974,The-Prominent-Eunuch-Chen-Ho

And again, it is a pinyin title. Pinyin is Romanization of Chinese. German titles are never written in Chinese, except in a very few arthouse movies. This is not an arthouse movie, it's a martial arts movie. So it would have definitely gotten a lurid German title in Germany.

The person who added this title must have made a mistake and chose the wrong country. Why did he not have to back it up with something?  If the IMDb editors believe that there's a German release, they should be able to prove it. Good luck.

Anyway, thanks for reply.

Hello Peter_pbn

thanks for the comment, if I understand it right, it is allowed to add a display title for every country although it was never released there? I hope I'm wrong because this would not make any sense to me. As you already commented in the other topic, it absolutely looks like it was released in the chosen country. In my humble opinion, this should work automatically, if a movie was not released in Germany, then it should be automatically displayed with the international English title, if any. It there's no english title either, then the original title of the country of origin, no matter what language.

However, if the person who added that pinyin title just intended to add a "display title" for German IMDb visitors, why did he choose a pinyin title rather than the english title? (and why only for Germany and not for other countries?) Average Germans can't understand Chinese, but they can understand English.

@ChenHungLieh  On this point:

if I understand it right, it is allowed to add a display title for every country although it was never released there?

Yes, that is correct.  Another way to look at this is that for a movie to be known by a particular title in a specific country, it does not require a release directly in that country; especially not these days as more titles are now available globally. For example, if local media in Germany was publishing a feature on say, the actor Lieh Lo, then how would they refer to this title in their filmography? From your post, it sounds like they might use the English title in such a context, in which case the German / IMDb-display-title AKA should be replaced with the English title and not simply deleted. This will be why your edit was rejected. 

The German AKA here does not indicate that there was a direct release in Germany —  this is the purpose of the “Release Dates” section on the same page. 

As to why this is now the case, then please see the announcement which Peter referenced at https://community-imdb.sprinklr.com/conversations/data-issues-policy-discussions/alternate-title-policy-change/5f4a79f78815453dba933419

and specifically:

Our goal at IMDb is to be able to represent to any customer in any locale (speaking language and country) what a title is known as.

For example, 

"Black Panther"

 is known in Germany as 

"Black Panther"

 to a German speaking audience, regardless of the text being in English. Similarly, 

"Das Boot"

 is known in the USA as 

"Das Boot"

 to an English speaking audience, regardless of the text being in German.

Previously IMDb customers around the world would regularly complain about mix-ups in local title display and these can now all be resolved by using the correct AKA titles. I personally posted tens, if not hundreds, of replies explaining this here prior to the change in 2018. 

Hope this helps.

I hope that Vincent Fournols sees the above message.

Thanks jeorj_euler!

But honestly, to echo the other messages (including yours) around Col Needham's other messages on the difficulty to implement new genres, I have stopped contributing. There is too little support and tools from IMDb team in our strive (for free...) to improve an ecosystem which has become too complex.

Vincent, I'm afraid that's very understandable. The lack of support and communication (the Contributors Charter seems to be a one-way street) is huge and has been for quite a while.

I do still contribute, but do so significantly less than I used to. It really is a shame IMDb offers so little. I sometimes don't know if it's a good thing that I still contribute at all, but I'm afraid old habits die hard and I do still use the database as a user who wants to keep track of what he's seen. It's a bit of a conundrum for me I suppose.

Well, from my perspective, almost everything ongoing on with "big tech" becoming too complex. Maybe there have only been a few companies in that sector that designed all of their products and protocols for extreme forward compatibility, throughout several decades. What I see right now is that there are, for example, too many web browsers going to seemingly-incompatible directions, and the same goes for operating systems, programming languages, scripting languages, domain registrars, streaming services, set-top boxes, video games consoles and personal data assistants, all doing roughly the same things at roughly the same efficiency but in different ways.

Hi ChenHungLieh -

If you recently submitted an update to replace the German/ IMDb-display-title AKA with the English title and it was not approved, please post the 18-digit submission reference number here and our staff can take a look.

Hello Michelle, as I already said, I'm not willing to change the title into English, as it makes no sense. There are two different English titles anyway, how should I know under which title this movie would be known in Germany, IF it would be known in Germany? Right now this movie is NOT known in Germany, so adding a German title makes no sense at all. Only a few German nerds (like me) know about the existence of this movie, I don't think that this is reason enough to add a title in the IMDB. Furthermore, it would be completely subjective if I would add (or rather senselessly duplicate) an english title by pure guessing. Is an individual & subjective guess already enough evidence for IMDb?

Why is it not possible to re-check the history of this entry? What is the evidence, that the contributor used to back this title? If there's no evidence, why was the contributor not obliged to provide evidence? Why am I the only idiot here who has to come up with evidence?

I recently tried a third time to remove this title, without success of course ("unable to verify" again). The reference number of my latest attempt is:

210414-203515-661000

My comment to explain my contribution was the following text, please enlighten me what is wrong with my reasoning:

"I request again the deletion of this Chinese pinyin title, under which this movie is here alleged to be "known" in Germany. The contributor who added this title was NOT authorized or qualified to determine how this movie is known in Germany, simply because this movie is officially and widely UNKNOWN in Germany! Only a few of German hardcore nerds are aware of the existence of this movie, which has NEVER been released in Germany. And even these mentioned few nerds (including me) do not know this movie under its Chinese pyinin titles, but rather under its several different English titles. To associate the pinyin title with Germany is not only plainly wrong, but also confusing as it suggests that this movie was released in Germany, which is not the case."