Same book in multiple languages

[barlowrm]

Dear all,

In my calibre library, I have several books in multiple languages. In calibre, I choose to index the books using always the title in the original language, which I find easier to remember compared to some creatively translated titles. Calibre has no problems in treating the books as different records, but cc only accepts one, refusing to receive multiple entries with identical title/author, even if the rest of the Metadata is different. It seems like the translation to be loaded is the one with the lowest calibre id, which means it's in my case completely random.

Is this the expected behavior or a bug? Is there some special feature I need to explicitly activate in the settings?

Aside from different languages, I can imagine several cases where two books with same title/author may be different, in particular for old works, where different editions used to have quite different contents. Or, you could have different translations of the same book to the same language, with different translators. Is there a way of having cc accept records from calibre even if the title/author match with a book it already has?

Thanks for your help,

Andrea.

[chaley]

CC+calibre consider books to be the "same" if they have the same file name on the device. The file name is controlled by a template. If that template is something like "{title} - {author}" then all books with the same title + author are indistinguishable. The actual book stored will be the last one sent.

You can achieve what you want by changing the template so the file names are different. For example, you could change the template to add the calibre ID, the book's UUID, or some other metadata that is unique to each copy. The calibre ID is the best choice unless you have multiple calibre libraries, in which case books might share the calibre ID across libraries.

As for changing the template and assuming you are using Android CC, you have three choices.

• You can tell CC to always use its internal template (Settings / File Names / Use CC template everywhere. This is the best choice if you use more than one connection type. See "Solution 1" in our FAQ How do I get the same file names in CC no matter which connection I use? for more information.
• You can use "Solution 2" in the above-mentioned FAQ. However, this could trigger the problem described in the FAQ [Android] I have added a lot of books and now adding books takes forever. What do I do? if you have a lot of books in CC's library.
• You can change the template in the wireless device driver in calibre (Solution 3). This solution will work only if you do not use the Cloud Connection.

[barlowrm]

Dear chaley,

Thanks a lot for your reply. Using the calibre ID in the file name seems like a perfect solution for me. Before I try it, however, I wanted to ask: what happens to the books I already transferred? Will they be automatically updated? Will cc still understand that they come from my main calibre library, or would I have to transfer everything from scratch after the template change?

Thanks for your help,

Andrea

[chaley]

Originally Posted by barlowrm

Dear chaley,

Thanks a lot for your reply. Using the calibre ID in the file name seems like a perfect solution for me. Before I try it, however, I wanted to ask: what happens to the books I already transferred? Will they be automatically updated? Will cc still understand that they come from my main calibre library, or would I have to transfer everything from scratch after the template change?

There is no need to resend books. Changing the template will change the name for future transfers. Books already transferred will keep the old name and remain "attached" to the associated book in the calibre library. If for some reason you resend a book and assuming you checked the "Replace existing book files" option then the book file will be renamed at that point.

Thanks for your help,

Andrea

You are welcome.