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Show AKA's


TonyMayhew wrote 3 years ago: 1

I've noticed a lot of shows on TVmaze have a Russian AKA which, AFAIK, are not official AKA's used by Russian networks, but just translations.

For instance, Jonathan Ross' Comedy Club, Mary Berry's Simple Comforts, Nadiya Bakes, Bel-Air are just a snippet of some recently added shows that have a Russian AKA, 2 of which are still In Development.

From the Date Policies: "An AKA may only be added when that name is officially used by the show's Network or Web Channel".

I could be totally wrong here, but I find it hard to believe these shows & the many others are airing in the Russian Federation so quickly that an AKA would even be known yet.

All the above and the many, many more AKA's were added by the same user, who i will not name here. TPTB have a way to check that info, rather than me calling them out :)


JuanArango wrote 3 years ago: 2

@TonyMayhew wrote:
I've noticed a lot of shows on TVmaze have a Russian AKA which, AFAIK, are not official AKA's used by Russian networks, but just translations.

For instance, Jonathan Ross' Comedy Club, Mary Berry's Simple Comforts, Nadiya Bakes, Bel-Air are just a snippet of some recently added shows that have a Russian AKA, 2 of which are still In Development.

From the Date Policies: "An AKA may only be added when that name is officially used by the show's Network or Web Channel".

I could be totally wrong here, but I find it hard to believe these shows & the many others are airing in the Russian Federation so quickly that an AKA would even be known yet.

All the above and the many, many more AKA's were added by the same user, who i will not name here. TPTB have a way to check that info, rather than me calling them out :)

First you are correct, the policy right now forbids that, but I think to be more user friendly we should allow such a thing, so that people who are using  adifferent alphabet can search and find the shows here :)


TonyMayhew wrote 3 years ago: 1

I don't get why you would allow something that very clearly doesn't follow the guidelines set in the data polices, but OK. You might wanna add something to the policy that allows AKA's to be set to anything depending on the language spoken by the user adding the data. 


JuanArango wrote 3 years ago: 3

@TonyMayhew wrote:
I don't get why you would allow something that very clearly doesn't follow the guidelines set in the data polices, but OK. You might wanna add something to the policy that allows AKA's to be set to anything depending on the language spoken by the user adding the data. 

No, no, i said you are correct, it is forbidden, but before we go delete all those aka I would like to suggest to allow it so that we are more user friendly.


gazza911 wrote 3 years ago: 1

I think that when a name is used consistently enough in one country, to a degree that it's not known by any other names there, that it should be allowed even if it wasn't the original network who assigned that name.

That currently isn't the case (so would require a policy change).

I'd still have a problem with random fan translations though.

tnt wrote 3 years ago: 3

@gazza911 wrote:
I think that when a name is used consistently enough in one country, to a degree that it's not known by any other names there, that it should be allowed even if it wasn't the original network who assigned that name.

That currently isn't the case (so would require a policy change).

I'd still have a problem with random fan translations though.

The thing with Russia is that there is a number (about 10 or so) of non-official (read pirate) release groups, doing a translation of foreign shows, and since they love to be "creative" and do things "their own way", the same show could have 3-4 different Russian names (sometimes a very unexpected ones). Usually, those groups post TV-related news on their websites, translating the names of upcoming shows. Considering that most of the viewers who prefer pirated content don't bother to learn English, and each release group have their devotees, we have a bunch of different AKAs. No policy would fix that, for obvious reasons, the people still be adding them no matter what ))
Some shows, however, are being broadcasted on TV or released on curated web-channels, therefore they would have a legit Russian AKA.

On the other hand, I see no harm in having all names under which the show is known as AKAs. Maybe I'm missing something, but what's the difference if it's official or not, as long as it is known under this name for a group of people speaking the same language?


JuanArango wrote 3 years ago: 1

@tnt wrote:
The thing with Russia is that there is a number (about 10 or so) of non-official (read pirate) release groups, doing a translation of foreign shows, and since they love to be "creative" and do things "their own way", the same show could have 3-4 different Russian names (sometimes a very unexpected ones). Usually, those groups post TV-related news on their websites, translating the names of upcoming shows. Considering that most of the viewers who prefer pirated content don't bother to learn English, and each release group have their devotees, we have a bunch of different AKAs. No policy would fix that, for obvious reasons, the people still be adding them no matter what ))
Some shows, however, are being broadcasted on TV or released on curated web-channels, therefore they would have a legit Russian AKA.

On the other hand, I see no harm in having all names under which the show is known as AKAs. Maybe I'm missing something, but what's the difference if it's official or not, as long as it is known under this name for a group of people speaking the same language?

I fully agree here!


Nikquest wrote 3 years ago: 2

As the same Russian viewer, I can say that @tnt , in principle, wrote everything right. Only release groups we have far from 10, their number exceeds 40 :D But, as a rule, I personally can add the Russian-language AKA (although I rarely do this), so that it would be more convenient to search for the series later both here and on the website that is used in our country and synchronizes with yours, takes information from it. I just saw a sad picture more than once that people are lazy to search for the original names of the show, and AKA can help such lazy people. The search engine of our site picks up all your names and all AKA, so people simply, by virtue of habit, write first in Russian.


david wrote 3 years ago: 1

First of all, thanks for your explanations!

So two things are going on here. First, AKA's in a foreign country in general. The intention here was to allow foreign AKA's if they are used in any official way (if the show is airing on TV in a different country with a different name, or DVD's are released in the foreign country with a different name, or the web channel operates in multiple countries and uses different titles). I think the policy can use some clarification here; split it up in "local AKA" and "foreign AKA".

Secondly, unofficial translations. Here I'm not quite convinced that we should list the fan translation of some random pirate group; if we start allowing that, where does it end? We have 250 countries listed, if we start adding 3-4 arbitrary pirate group translations as AKA for all of them, it'd be an unmaintainable mess.

Is there really much value in having them listed anyway? TVmaze is only available in English; someone who only speaks Russian would be better off on a different website? One that's available in Russian and does list these pirate group translations?


gazza911 wrote 3 years ago: 2

@david wrote:
Is there really much value in having them listed anyway? TVmaze is only available in English; someone who only speaks Russian would be better off on a different website? One that's available in Russian and does list these pirate group translations?

My point was when a show is only known under a single name - that is not the official name - in a foreign country, those people wouldn't be able to find it as they have no idea.

SilverSurfer wrote 3 years ago: 1

@gazza911 wrote:
My point was when a show is only known under a single name - that is not the official name - in a foreign country, those people wouldn't be able to find it as they have no idea.

It sounds like you are describing a gray area between an official non-English name vs pirate non-English names ... perhaps, like other gray areas, it needs to be looked at case by case? Also, perhaps, that would end up being more trouble than it's worth but short of blocking the addition of AKAs how can it be controlled other than asking that non-official names be cleared here, or a seperately set-up thread, for approval before addition?

tnt wrote 3 years ago: 2

@david wrote:
Is there really much value in having them listed anyway? TVmaze is only available in English; someone who only speaks Russian would be better off on a different website? One that's available in Russian and does list these pirate group translations?

Well, the problem is not limited to the Russian language. I wonder, how many Asian dramas, for example, 1) actually being officially released in English-speaking countries and 2) have more than one official English name? For many of them we list 2-3 absolutely different names, and most of those names and/or AKAs came straight from MyDramaList.

deleted wrote 3 years ago: 1

@tnt wrote:
Well, the problem is not limited to the Russian language. I wonder, how many Asian dramas, for example, 1) actually being officially released in English-speaking countries and 2) have more than one official English name? For many of them we list 2-3 absolutely different names, and most of those names and/or AKAs came straight from MyDramaList.

Most of these titles are former working titles, so in theory they are official 

tnt wrote 3 years ago: 2

@Thomas wrote:
Most of these titles are former working titles, so in theory they are official 

I'm genuinely curious, why would a Chinese TV show, shot in China for a Chinese network or web channel in the Chinese language have several English working titles?

deleted wrote 3 years ago: 1

@tnt wrote:
I'm genuinely curious, why would a Chinese TV show, shot in China for a Chinese network or web channel in the Chinese language have several English working titles?

If you check the official posters, it often has an English title too in small letters. Don't ask me why, but they do.

tnt wrote 3 years ago: 3

@Thomas wrote:
If you check the official posters, it often has an English title too in small letters. Don't ask me why, but they do.

Yeah, I know, and usually the name on the poster makes sense (or at least sounds like an actual name). But AKAs sometime sound like an Aliexpress-style bad case of google translate )) 

BTW, if we return to Russian, you most definitely will find a version of the show's poster for every AKA, made very professionally so they look like a real thing :)


wmulder wrote 3 years ago: 1

@tnt wrote:
Yeah, I know, and usually the name on the poster makes sense (or at least sounds like an actual name). But AKAs sometime sound like an Aliexpress-style bad case of google translate )) 

BTW, if we return to Russian, you most definitely will find a version of the show's poster for every AKA, made very professionally so they look like a real thing :)

They would not do that in Russia, would they?

tnt wrote 3 years ago: 1

@wmulder wrote:
They would not do that in Russia, would they?

What do you mean?


wmulder wrote 3 years ago: 1

Just a little tongue in cheek about the Russian video pirate industry

quosek wrote 3 years ago: 2

you have to remember that shows are not available in all countries. Very often the only way of watching the show is getting pirated version (sad but true)

on top of that you have to understand Russia - they really do not care about ownership rights (I know that few years ago you were able to purchase pirated DVDs in standard shops. Nobody cared, government was OK with that)

So maybe we could split AKA into 2 different sections:

- official AKA (used for official translation, etc)

- unofficial AKA

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