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A fact from Der geteilte Himmel appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 1 May 2019 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that Christa Wolf's Der geteilte Himmel(cover pictured), published in East Germany in 1963, was called a "socialist bestseller"?
I don't know ... I'd take that to a requested move because the original English title seems fairly well-established. Graham87 13:42, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the move request was: Move. We have consensus that the German name is well known in English sources, and may be the better bet considering the different translations of the title. Cúchullaint/c 13:45, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Divided Heaven (novel) → Der geteilte Himmel – I suggest to move the article to the original title Der geteilte Himmel, because the most recent translation is They Divided the Sky, not Divided Heaven. Heaven has a religious connotation which was not meant by the author. Pages linking to this work mean the 1963 first publication in German, not any translation. Also: the German genre "Erzählung" hardly translates to "novel", novella perhaps, literally "narration". --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:53, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, but would support Divided Heaven (novel) → They Divided the Sky. English-language translations of this book were never published under its German title nor is it known in the English-speaking world under its German title. Most or all mentions of this book in English will, of course, mention its original title, thus accounting for the German title's Google hits, but those hits do not confirm that the book is known in English by its original title. As for the subject of multiple English titles for books, Unizhennye i oskorblyonnye has been published as The Insulted and the Injured or The Insulted and Humiliated, but not under its Russian title. À la recherche du temps perdu has been published in English as Remembrance of Things Past and In Search of Lost Time, but not under its French title, etc. —Roman Spinner(talk • contribs) 06:05, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Why would you even expect an English translation appearing under the German title? - We go by common name, no? Both English titles are not often referred to. One is a bad translation, the other only a few years old, so certainly not "common". Of yourse the German title, when linked and mentioned, will normally come with a translation or two. Russian is different because of the unfamiliar alphabet. Better compare other German works such as Der Kontrabaß. Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:43, 28 March 2019 (UTC)--Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:43, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly. Why are we discussing something irrelevant (Proust) rather than sources for Christa Wolf? In ictu oculi (talk) 10:50, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This nomination seems to have been initiated because Christa Wolf's novel, published in the German-speaking world under its original title, was first published in the English-speaking world under one title and then under another title. Such revised title forms have occurred previously and Dostoevsky as well as Proust are given as examples.
If the WP:COMMONNAME of a work which originated outside the English-speaking world remains in its original form, such as Les Misérables, then that is the form we use for the main header of the work's article. There are German titles, such as Das Boot, which remain unchanged in the English-speaking world, but Der geteilte Himmel is not one of such work titles. It has been published in the English-speaking world under its English titles which are its common names.
Just clarifying speculation: this move was initiated because only yesterday I worked on the article and felt that it has the wrong title. I come from opera, where an estimated 98% of articles come with the native title, and only some super-well known ones by an English title, which then often has to be piped, because the Salzburg Festival will play Die Zauberflöte, not The Magic Flute, and the Metropolitan Opera the same. In this specific case, the first translation is just wrong, as explained above. A socialist writer would not mean Heaven. Naming the article the new way would also be wrong because it is not common. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:14, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Since the majority of (non-English-language) operas performed in the English-speaking world are either Italian, German or French, those familiar languages would tend to be the ones with the familiar titles (Spanish and Portuguese titles are largely confined to films). However, other than Russian operas, Eastern Europe is less familiar territory and, once the repertoire wanders there, with the likes of Příhody Lišky Bystroušky, A Kékszakállú herceg vára or Straszny Dwór, reliance upon English titles has to return. Also, on the subject of piping titles, redirects (such as those examples) tend to serve better than piping by providing clear identification of the other title, rather than hiding it.
Returning to our specific case, there is no argument as to the correctness of the (mis)translated title in the same manner as "The Hurt and the Humiliated" is a more-exact title than "The Insulted and the Injured" and "In Search of Lost Time" is a better title than "Remembrance of Things Past". However, once an English title, such as the overly-literal The 400 Blows, becomes associated with a work, such association, rightly or wrongly, becomes the work's common name.
Here, the book, the film and various references still cling to the decades-old English title Divided Heaven, misleading as it may be. Since a new translation with a new title has been published, I would support changing the old English title to the new English title, but as a work published in English, this book has to have an English title. These titling discussions have been continuing for years --- nearly ten years ago, a similar edit was mentioned at Talk:Cousin Bette#Page title - English or French? and there was a reply at Talk:Cousin Bette#Translations within the text. —Roman Spinner(talk • contribs) 19:13, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The translations disagree, and who knows if they next one will disagree as well. Perhaps someday academics will consense on one particular English translated title, but right now its ambiguous, where naming it per the German title is not. Redirects can be created, we can document the various translated titles in the text to aid searching. As a natural disambiguation method, the German title works as well. -- Netoholic@ 01:27, 29 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The German title cannot work at all since Christa Wolf's book has never been published in the English-speaking world under its German title. I cannot find a single translated book that has been published in English with an English-language title and yet its Wikipedia main title header is in the original language and, if a Wikipedia article with such a title is uncovered, it needs to be moved.
If there is consensus for moving the older translation's title, Divided Heaven, to the new English title, They Divided the Sky, then it should be moved but, if there is no consensus, it should remain under the long-established older English title. —Roman Spinner(talk • contribs) 04:49, 29 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.
