As a content editor, I want clear help text when adding a source to explain how to select the source language, so that it is done consistently for translations and transcriptions.

[kseniaryzhova]

testing notes (QA) round two

On the QA site admin, navigate to the Sources section. Add or edit a Source.

• [x] Now, under "Languages", the help text should refer to "the Unspecified language option" for unpublished transcriptions, instead of instructing users to choose the language of the transcription text.

testing notes (QA)

On the QA site admin, navigate to the Sources section. Add or edit a Source.

• [x] Under "Source type", the help text should clearly communicate the need for different sources for unpublished transcriptions and translations.
• [x] Under "Languages", the help text should clearly communicate that only sources consisting entirely of transcription content should include transcription language.

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dev notes

Revised solution: Help text when adding a source to make it clear that unpublished translations and unpublished editions are two separate sources, and that the unpublished translation sources need to be set with the language of the translation.

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Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. Right now there is an undifferentiated unpublished source option, which means editions and translations are being tagged with this option. It's a requirement to select a source language, but for editions, we track the source language through the language tagging option on the document itself. For translations, however, we do want to know the language of scholarship.

Describe the solution you'd like We want two separate source type options: unpublished translations and unpublished editions, to replaced the current "unpublished" option. For unpublished editions, there is no need to select a source language and it should not display in the footnote. However, for unpublished translations, the language of scholarship should be selected and should display in a footnote.

[blms]

@kseniaryzhova This can actually be done without writing any code. (One can add and rename source types from within the admin.)

However, I'm now wondering if this makes sense as the best solution for this problem. So far, Source Type doesn't refer at all to the contents of the work and its relationship to documents, it only refers to the form of the actual publication (Book, Dissertation, etc). Adding in the document relation would change the semantic nature of that relationship.

In my opinion, a more consistent resolution would be to create multiple sources by the same author with "Unpublished" as the Source Type. They can then be differentiated by title—one of them could be titled "unpublished editions" and one could be titled "unpublished translations", for example. They could have the same author and refer to the same set of, say, Google Docs, but the title will indicate to content editors which one to use for which type of footnote. The Source Language for the "Unpublished translations" source can then be set to refer to the language of translation.

In my opinion this is a data cleanup task that requires manual work to differentiate which unpublished sources are meant to be used for translations and which are meant to be used for editions, and then retitle them, set the Source Language for each appropriately, and select the appropriate one for the footnote.

As for displaying the language in the frontend, it will already show like this:

• In the scholarship records page, only non-English languages will be specifically mentioned, in parentheses
• In the dropdown menu for choosing translation, the parentheses will show even for English sources

I think that wouldn't be any different for books or dissertations vs unpublished sources; i.e. it can be assumed that an unpublished translation is translated into English unless otherwise specified, like other kinds of sources. But maybe I'm wrong about that!

[kseniaryzhova]

@blms so even if the translation and edition are on the same Google Doc, they would still be two different sources (with the same author, etc)?

[blms]

@kseniaryzhova Yes, that’s the idea! Though, I think that would be the case either way; the difference is just that in my view, they should both have the “unpublished” source type, rather than one having “unpublished edition” and one having “unpublished translation”. And they would be differentiated by name rather than source type.

[mrustow]

@kseniaryzhova I agree with Ben: "unpublished" refers to the nature of the scholarship, not what's inside the scholarship or its content. So we would want to create two separate sources for each author (or author group): "transcription" or "translation." We pretty much have to do this anyway when we enter the TE, so it's not really extra work beyond the initial investment in creating a 'translation' source when a 'transcription' one already exists. Also, I find the process of creating a new source to be very streamlined and lightweight on the data entry side!

[blms]

Great, thanks @mrustow!

So @kseniaryzhova, does this resolve the issue?

• Always select the language of the translation for the "unpublished" sources with only translation content
• The language for "unpublished" sources with only transcription content is irrelevant, since transcription language always = Document language
  • The latter sources should never have Footnotes tagged "digital translation"

We could also disable the forced requirement to select a source language, if that's helpful for the latter case. One could also just select the language(s) of the transcriptions. It won't really be used except in the "Scholarship Records" page, where it will show in parentheses:

[kseniaryzhova]

@blms I think we'll need help text outlining all of this, to make it clear that unpublished translations and unpublished editions are two separate sources even if they have the same author(s) and are often on the same Google Doc. Essentially we just need to tell people that if they're inputting unpublished editions, to not touch the language selector. But for translations it's necessary. And the entries will look identical, you're just distinguishing by the name

[blms]

That makes sense, thank you @kseniaryzhova! I'll track the help text addition here, then.

[kseniaryzhova]

@blms Works as it should, just a quick question about the language help text. "The language(s) the source is written in. Note: Sources should never include transcription language unless the entire source consists of a transcription. Hold down “Control”, or “Command” on a Mac, to select more than one." I thought we decided if it's the transcription language we're not going to add the language at all since it'll be registered as the language of the document itself.

[blms]

Good point @kseniaryzhova, the only problem is that it's currently not possible to create a source record with no languages. Should we remove that constraint? Or is it ok to have people select the language of the transcription in this specific case? I can see how that could be confusing when you only sometimes have to select the transcription language.

[kseniaryzhova]

@blms works as it should, thank you! Closing!