About Languages

The appropriate language should be designated in the metadata to ensure that accents, capitalizations, and casings appear correctly in the Digital Merchant store.

11.1 English, Spanish, and Portuguese

English albums and track titles should be in title case format and follow the casing conventions as outlined in the Capitalization & Title Case section. In addition, for English, words before and after a "-", "/", or ":" should be capitalized.

For Spanish and Portuguese album and track titles, the content provider can decide on either title or sentence casing (as long as the casing is consistent through a given album).

11.2 Swedish, French, and Italian

Swedish, French, and Italian album and track titles should be formatted in sentence case format. For example:

Albums

Tracks

L’amour dans la rue

Jonques de pêcheurs au crepuscule

Il mondo che vorrei

Les chants magnétiques

C’è chi dice no

Il mondo che vorrei

Hoppa upp!

E adesso che tocca a me

För sent för edelweiss

Kärlek är ett brev skickat tusen gånger

Swing de Paris

Sur les monts d’Auvergne

11.3 German

For German album and track titles, sentence case should be used and the first letter of every noun should be capitalized.

Albums

Tracks

Was ihr wollt

Ich tu dir Weh

So ist das Spiel

Dicke Mädchen haben schöne Namen

For German names and titles, all characters commonly used in German orthography should be used, such as: "Ä", "ä", "Ö", "ö", "Ü", "ü", "ß". For example:

Correct

Incorrect

Ihre größten Erfolge

Ihre groessten Erfolge

1000 Träume weit

1000 Traeume weit

All accents should be included for all supported languages.

For instances where Umlauts (or other accents) are not available, one should at least try to transliterate these characters (such as "å" becomes "aa" and "ä" becomes "ae"). For a more comprehensive list of transliterated accents, visit the following web page: http://cldr.unicode.org/index/cldr-spec/transliteration-guidelines.

For example:

Hôtel d’Angleterre
Révérence
Max Gazzè
L’uomo più furbo
Les plus belles chansons françaises

11.4 Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Thai

If an alternate local language title exists for the content, it may be provided instead of a translation of the original title. For example, these album titles are acceptable:

Field Name

English

Japanese

Album Title

Ellie, My Love

いとしのエリー

Field Name

English

Chinese

Album Title

Take Me to Your Heart

吻别

When communicating different character sets or different directions of writing in DDEX messages, please refer to the following:

https://kb.ddex.net/display/HBK/Metadata+in+different+languages and https://kb.ddex.net/display/HBK/Direction+of+writing

Chinese Localizations: Chinese language content must be submitted with Traditional Chinese in the native field and Simplified Chinese in the localization field.

Side-by-Side Translations: Except for Korean, side-by-side translations are not accepted.

Korean Side-by-Side Translations: Korean content with side-by-side translations must have Korean first, followed by English without parentheses. This does not apply to artist names.

Correct

Incorrect

말해봐 Talk Talk

말해봐 Mal Hae Bwa

그대네요 It’s You

Geu Dae Ne Yo 그대네요

묻지 않을∞‘요

묻지 않을∞‘요 (Mudji Aneulgeyo)

Wouldn’t Ask You

Mudji Aneulgeyo

Phonetics: Thai, Chinese, and Korean phonetics of any sort are not accepted in album, song, or music video titles.

11.5 Language in Artist names

If a non-Western artist has an English or international band or artist name, that name should be provided in the native field. The native field should be used for internationally recognized representations of artist names, songs, or album titles. Localization fields may be used for representations familiar to the local market, if different from the international version.

Information for artists that are not internationally recognized may be represented in the local language in the native field. Additional localizations in other languages are optional.

Chinese Artist Localizations: Chinese content should always have the Traditional Chinese name of the artist in the native field. Simplified Chinese translations must be provided in the localizations fields.

Chinese Artists with Western Names: If the artist of Chinese content has a Western name, the name should be listed for non-Chinese localizations in the order of “Given Name, Family Name.” For example, these album artists are acceptable:

Field Name

Traditional Chinese

Simplified Chinese

English Artist

Album Artist

成龍

成龙

Jackie Chan

Album Artist

周杰倫

周杰伦

Jay Chou

Chinese or Korean Artists Without Western Names: If the artist does not have a Western name, the phonetic name may be listed in localizations in the order of “Family Name, Given Name.”

The Korean artist “박지윤” should be provided in English:

Field Name

Korean

English

AlbumArtist

박지윤

Park Ji Yoon

The Chinese artist “蔡琴” should be provided in English:

Field Name

KOREAN

ENGLISH

AlbumArtist

蔡琴

Tsai Chin