[Jellby]

There are some authors (persons or institutions) that have different names in different languages: Aristotle is "Aristóteles" in Spanish and "Aristote" in French; UNO is "ONU" in Spanish and French; Homer is "Omero" in Italian... The question which name should one use in the metadata for a book by these authors? (Or similarly: how do librarians deal with these authors?)

In general, one would use the original name of the author in his/her own language, of course, but sometimes the "translated" names have a too strong tradition to ignore them, or there is no "own language". As a second choice, I'd use the language the book is written in. The problem is I would have "Homer" for an English book and "Omero" for an Italian book, and these would be sorted as different authors, when they are actually one and the same. Or there could be different languages in the same book.