Alternate Title Policy Change

Tuesday August 14 2018 Alternate Title Policy Change

Thanks for announcing this change. I'm happy to see that you stress you want the title that is primarily known to the locale and that that doesn't have to be a translated title, because previously, the (imdb display title) has been added too frivolously in quite some cases.Side note: In the first sentence regarding the five basic rules to follow, it says there are six basic rules: https://help.imdb.com/article/contribution/titles/alternate-titles-akas/GBFBWTQG2RLMHSUR?ref_=helpsr... Can you change this to five?

Thanks Marco, this has now been done. Regards, Will

1. It's not a particularly easy rule to apply. Two contributors may disagree on which title is most commonly used in a country. 2. If a title other than the original theatrical title in a country is chosen as the display title, which attribute should the theatrical title have? The guide says we should not use "theatrical title" as it is assumed (per rule 5 'Medium' and the attribute definitions, box 6).

Hi Peter, Apologies for the delay, in the case of two contributors disagreeing on the imdb display title we will revert to the title as it is most commonly referred to in any sources for that region. In cases where the imdb display title doesn't match the theatrical title we will allow the use of that attribute. If a title from a different medium is chosen as the imdb display title then you may enter a secondary title aka explaining the medium specific release title. I hope this helps. Regards, Will

Does this mean that every single title should have an imdb display title aka for the country of origin or are there only specific circumstances where that would be appropriate? The former seems like a lot of work.

Hi Matt, In an ideal world yes each country of origin should have an additional imdb display title. Regards, Will

Will,It seems that the technical ability of IMDb is far from capable of achieving the goals it supposedly has set.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.However, there are many locales which IMDb simply does not accept, like Hebrew and Chinese. Some discussion about this here: https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/non-functioning-language-options-for-titlesIn short, IMDb pretends to accept Hebrew, Chinese, etc. titles, but in practice does not accept their characters. Editors have resorted to transcription - where they phonetically write the title using English characters. This results in titles that are hard to read and help no one.For your consideration, I believe IMDb should accept all valid Unicode characters that are part of any language.

Will, There is a small typo in the guide text that you quoted above: "country or origin". The typo has also been carried over into the intro message in the update form.

Thanks for the spot Peter, I've amended all instances of this now.

The submission guide version of this text says, "We are now encouraging the submission of an imdb display title for all known countries, including the country of origin." I would question the wording "all known countries". I am seeing display titles, identical to the original title, added for various foreign countries where the film has not been released. Is there any value in this? I think it just leads to the false impression that the film has been released more widely than it has.

As part of the above work we are also investigating the possibility of further alternate title changes for episodes. Regards, Will @Will Any uppdate? Are there any plans to alow adding Alternate Episode Titles for diferent languages on TV shows like it is for Movies? If not, why?