Talk:I Have Become the Tide

Regarding the recent revert on my edits

@Beccaynr, just as you suggested, I am initiating a discussion here. You had reverted my edit with a summary "restore per article content and ref". The article says the novel is an English novel and just had a translation in Malayalam. Would you agree to this statement? If so, then the novel should be categorised as an English novel not as a Malayalam novel. Just for a better understanding, I had cited an example earlier which was Shakespeare's Hamlet. The work had translations in hundreds of languages including Malayalam. Would the article include all those hundreds of categories? It's a fairly a simple logic here. A book is categorised based on the original language it was written. As simple as that. I clearly don't get why you want to make a very long discussion out of it. Malayala Sahityam (talk) 17:45, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, Malayala Sahityam. From my view, based on the content of this article, the subject matter of this book, as well as the one translation of this book, it seems helpful for readers to have the fact that this is also a Malayalam novel included as a category. However, I am not particularly familiar with the category system and I think it would be helpful to have guidance from a guideline or policy to apply here. I have reviewed MOS:NOVELS and WP:WAF but neither seem to offer clarification. I am pinging Bearcat because of their experience with categories. Thanks again, Beccaynr (talk) 18:52, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Hi Beccaynr. I presume from your comment that you agree this is an English novel. Having a translation in Malayalam does not make it a Malayalam novel. In fact, hundreds of novels from various languages are translated into Malayalam every year. We cannot include Malayalam novel category for each of them simply because they are not Malayalam novels. I have not looked for any guidelines regarding this but it is fairly obvious if you look at any other article. Just from the example I mentioned earlier, Hamlet is an English play and I cannot add Malayalam play category to that article just because it had a translation in Malayalam. I guess the logic is pretty simple and clear here. Anyway, I would wait for Bearcat to reply. Thanks, Malayala Sahityam (talk) 19:43, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

I am not finding the comparison to the Hamlet article as helpful for clearly defining how to proceed here. For example, that article does not mention a Malayalam translation. Maybe we need a new category, e.g. Books translated into Malayalam. This is a topic of interest to me, so I appreciate your patience and understanding. Thank you, Beccaynr (talk) 20:04, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Dear Beccaynr, I am not sure if I am explaining myself clearly but we don't have categories like Books translated into Malayalam simply because most of the books will then have hundreds of categories because they are often translated into hundreds of languages. Instead, we have "Category:Translations into Malayalam" but this is used if there is an article on the Malayalam translation of the novel. Sometimes the translated works have their own articles such as Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary or Marx/Engels Collected Works. I really don't see any reason for such long arguments, my point was pretty clear and is substantiated by every article on Wikipedia. I am not sure if there are any guidelines written regarding this because it is a fairly obvious thing. Just to clarify on your query regarding Hamlet, please see Les Misérables. This is a French novel and not an English novel just because it had several English translations and because there is a mention of the translations in the article. Similarly, I Have Become the Tide is an English novel and should have only that category added. In fact, "Category:English-language novels" is a broad category and should be replaced with "Category:Indian English-language novels" in the article. I hope you get what I am trying to say. Malayala Sahityam (talk) 09:05, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

• Sorry for not getting to this sooner, but I wasn't really on Wikipedia at all yesterday and only just saw the ping now.
  We don't categorize books for the existence of translated editions in other languages besides the one they were originally written in — because it's possible for absolutely any book to be translated into any other language at any time, this could result in extreme category bloat as a book could potentially have to be categorized for hundreds of different translation languages. So no, the only language Wikipedia ever categorizes any work of literature for is the one it was originally written in to begin with, not for languages it's been translated into after the fact. The only time a book should ever be categorized for more than one language is in the rare instance that there's more than one language in the original text, such as Carole Corbeil's novel Voice-Over (if it had its own article at all). "Novels (and other things) translated into [different language]" categories have been tried in the past, and were deleted at WP:CFD as not being a defining characteristic of the novels. Bearcat (talk) 10:40, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
• Thank you, Malayala Sahityam and Bearcat for your thorough explanations. I feel I have a much better understanding of this now thanks to both of you and I have updated the categories. I had wondered if there was an exception based on the content of this article, because categories can be so useful for readers. I also enjoy working on book articles, so this is very helpful for me to better understand. Thank you again. Beccaynr (talk) 13:31, 9 February 2023 (UTC)