Multiple Languages / File name vs "Title" / Prefix

[VeganGamer]

Hi all, new to Kindle, Calibre AND this forum... great to be here!

I am a translator and therefore read books in several languages. I downloaded Calibre to fix the fact covers aren't appearing when I send epubs to my new PaperWhite, but now I'm having a "language issue".

I had already added language prefixes (like "EN - ", "ES -" and "JP -") to all ebooks for easy sorting in the Kindle library (on my PC I obviously separate by folders), but Calibre is using some metadata "Title" instead of the file name... (and I can't find "title" anywhere on the actual file metadata in Windows(!))... so now the Calibre library is chaos (many of the "Titles" don't accurately align with the books' real titles, which is also why I had updated the filenames to begin with).

Is there a way to force Calibre to pick up the filename from my PC as the "Title" without having to edit each "Title" in Calibre? If that's not possible, can I bulk add a prefix such as "EN - " to the beginning of all my English ebooks' titles, for example?

Thanks tons.
VG

[theducks]

Calibre HAS a Languages (also the lookup name)value in the metadata
No need to corrupt the Library metadata to use with your Kindle

Use the Metadata plugboard to merge {languages}- >{title}

[VeganGamer]

Sadly, the "languages" tab has the languages incorrect (So, a Japanese book is showing up in the "German" languages tab, etc. etc.). I will correct these all by hand... but also hoping to keep the filenames I already worked on. It might be nice to be able to look at the full library on Calibre, as well, with all the language clearly sorted. (If you sort by language in the full library, then Calibre does not also then sort alphabetically so it's still very tough to find a specific title!)

I also created collections for each language on Amazon, but finding each book to add to the collections requires scrolling through the whole library, so here again having the names with the prefix would be helpful!

[Sirtel]

Preferences -> Adding books -> uncheck the option "Read metadata from file contents rather than file name"

You'll have to delete all the books from your library and add them again.

[VeganGamer]

Thanks for the help!

[VeganGamer]

So, I tried this, but this doesn't seem to be the fix. Now "EN" is showing up as the title for all books and then the actual titles are showing up as authors. (I didn't mean to get rid of all metadata - simply use the filename as the "Title").

So, I guess I'll need to still upload them with the metadata "checked", and now the question is: Can I simply add "EN -" to all the English books in bulk (either via metadata on my PC before uploading, or after uploading within Calibre)? Or, do I need to change all the titles individually?

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by VeganGamer

So, I tried this, but this doesn't seem to be the fix. Now "EN" is showing up as the title for all books and then the actual titles are showing up as authors. (I didn't mean to get rid of all metadata - simply use the filename as the "Title").

So, I guess I'll need to still upload them with the metadata "checked", and now the question is: Can I simply add "EN -" to all the English books in bulk (either via metadata on my PC before uploading, or after uploading within Calibre)? Or, do I need to change all the titles individually?

Select all the books you want EN attached to the title of.
Right-click "Edit metadata" ->Edit metadata in bulk
Click the tab "Search and replace"
Search mode: Regular expression
Search field: {template}
Template: leave empty
Search for: (.*)
Replace with: EN-
Destination field: title
Mode: Prepend to field
Uncheck "Split result"
Click OK

[VeganGamer]

That worked! THANK YOU.

For anyone reading this in the future, the process above added a "," after the "EN - " so all English titles began with "EN - ," but I simply redid a search/replace and replaced all instances of "EN - ," to "EN - ", and everything now is perfect.

Thanks again for helping such a noob
VG