Talk:Divided Heaven (film)

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Requested move 2 May 2019

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: No consensus to move. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:56, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

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Divided Heaven (film) → Der geteilte Himmel (film) – Please place your rationale for the proposed move here. Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:19, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Please compare the novel on which it is based, Der geteilte Himmel. This film received prominence under it's German title. The translation given is not even a good one. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:21, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

• Support - To start out, I'll say that for WP:TITLES purposes, we should only consider what the film is called primarily in English sources, and its also entirely possible that the film could be called something different than the book is in English sources... so we should not name them "just to match". There are only two English sources in the article at the time I write this - DEFA Film Library uses the English title, and Hollywood Behind the Wall uses the German one primarily (both refer to the other title in parenthesis). Looking for other sources, I found Film and Memory in East Germany, Screening War: Perspectives on German Suffering, A Critical History of German Film, German Cinema: Texts in Context, "Getting History Right": East and West German Collective Memories of the Holocaust and War, DEFA: East German Cinema, 1946-1992, and East German Cinema: DEFA and Film History. These sources are mixed also, but based on the slight majority in favor of the German title and the variation of translation used in English (Divided Heaven, The Divided Heaven, Divided Sky), I think the safest bet is to support the move. This is a tough one, and I'll watch to see if anyone finds a preponderance of evidence to go the other way. -- Netoholic @ 16:14, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
• It does appear to have been released as Divided Heaven in North America though [1]. PC78 (talk) 16:44, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose per link submitted by PC78 and per "oppose" argument propounded at Talk:Der geteilte Himmel#Requested move 27 March 2019, which was the previous discussion regarding this subject. Both the book and the film have had established English-language titles in the English-speaking world until the 2013 publication of a new translation of the book, under a different English-language title, They Divided the Sky. The book was initially published in English in 1976 and was known in the English-speaking world only under that title until 2013. The film, however, remains under its original English-language title, Divided Heaven, and has been issued in a 2010 English-language DVD under that original English-language title. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 21:03, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

  Please add these publications to the article. When I looked at it, all sources mentioned the German title, which needless to say, is the original title. IMDb also uses the German title. - The DVD: is it in English, or did it get an English title for marketing reasons? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:52, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

All relevant links should already be within the concerned articles, but for those who would wish access to them here, this is the original 1976 English-language edition of Divided Heaven, this is the 2013 new translation under the new English-language title They Divided the Sky and this is the English-language DVD titled Divided Heaven.

This state of affairs may be compared to A la recherche du temps perdu which had been referenced since the 1920s under the collective English title Remembrance of Things Past, which is a phrase from a Shakespeare sonnet and not a translation of Proust's original title. Nearly 80 years later, in 2002, a newly-translated English-edition was published under the properly-translated English title In Search of Lost Time.

As we all know, books, films, plays, operas, etc, are not always known under their exactly-translated titles in other languages. In an obvious example, not a single one of Ingmar Bergman's films is known in the English-speaking world under its original title and most English speakers would have no idea that Det sjunde inseglet or Smultronstället are the original titles of The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 23:01, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Those are specific examples where English sources are consistent in what they call works. In this case, sources are very split but in my view lean toward the German primarily. You can't just give examples of "other things" and have them apply here. Also, that Amazon DVD release was put out by First Run Features, an independent film distribution company - not much of a "major release" - and is also out-of-print (sold as "used" by all the Amazon sellers). Its something to consider, but should not be weighed very highly at all. The title found on the DEFA Film Library is much more influential, as they produce their own DVDs on-demand for libraries and home use, but also distributed on streaming services like Kanopy. I personally weighed DEFA very strongly, but still found that book sources favor use of the German. -- Netoholic @ 02:17, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

The very nature of Wikipedia policy regarding WP:Article titles depends upon consistency and comparison with article titles which exemplify similar circumstances. In English Wikipedia, the WP:COMMONNAME of non-English-language books, films, works of art, etc, is based upon forms used in the English-speaking world. Thus, Hour of the Wolf and not Vargtimmen, but Das Boot and not The Boat.

If examples can be found that an English-language edition of Divided Heaven (novel) / They Divided the Sky was ever published under its German title Der geteilte Himmel, then that would certainly be proof of split-language titling and an argument for indicating the main title header of the book's article in English Wikipedia in its original German form.

In the same manner, if examples can be found that the German film version, exhibited and issued on DVD in the English-speaking world under its long-standing English title Divided Heaven, was ever shown in the English-speaking world under its German title or issued on an English-cover DVD under its German title, not simply mentioned in English film books alongside its long-standing English title, then such examples would go a long way towards confirmation that the German title has some claim to being considered as the common name in the English-speaking world. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 03:16, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

This is a response to something you said further up: all relevant links should be in the article. You are right, but obviously, they aren't. Would you kindly take the time to add that English DVD? I had nothing to do so far with the film article, only the book. I question an English title for a film in German, with a not-so-good translation on top. Your safest bet to avoid changes when better translations come up is use the original title. If Wikipedia uses that, it will become the common name ;) - Finally, you mentioned consistency. Per consistency, I'd wish to see The Flying Dutchman moved, being the only stage work by Richard Wagner NOT under its original title. I won't waste my time, though, - that seems a hopeless case. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:03, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

I have now added to this article a section header with text delineating the 2010 DVD and the DVD's availability at the DEFA Film Library as well as mention that Konrad Wolf was not related to Christa Wolf's husband Gerhard Wolf (publisher).

As for the English-language title, it was undoubtedly chosen because of the familiarity, at the time of the DVD's issue in 2010, of the 1976 English edition, the only one then available, thus making it the film's official English title until/if a new film version is made, which would perhaps use the new English title, They Divided the Sky.

Books, films and other works are frequently mistitled in other languages and it is likely that those English-language films or books which have been translated into German have not always received the most intuitive titles. A number of film classics with short titles, such as La Strada, La Dolce Vita, La Notte, L'Avventura, Das Boot, Pather Panchali, Aparajito or Ran are known only in those forms in the English-speaking world but, rarely, even a longer title, such as Y Tu Mamá También, becomes well known.

Regarding operas or other works of art, while it is true that German, Italian or French operatic titles are the norm in the English-speaking world, there are always exceptions when English WP:COMMONNAME is invoked, such as in the case that you submitted, The Flying Dutchman (opera) or, for that matter, The Marriage of Figaro, The Magic Flute, The Barber of Seville or William Tell (opera).

Opera titles in languages other than German, Italian or French, such as Příhody Lišky Bystroušky, A Kékszakállú herceg vára or Straszny Dwór are almost always translated into English. The occasional film versions of operas shown in the English-speaking world are even more likely to have English titles, such as The Pearl Fishers (film), the Australian filmization of Les pêcheurs de perles. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 04:33, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose - as per User:PC78, pointing out that the film was released in the US with the English-language title, and User:Roman Spinner, who has with enormous patience and care explained how WP:COMMONNAME and WP:ENGLISH apply here. Ingratis (talk) 01:15, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

  We all agree that there is a DVD under the English title. My point is that the relevance of this film (ranked among 100 most influential films at a time) is not that English-titled German-language DVD, but the film with a German title. We have links from other articles to this film, and none of them means the English-titled DVD. Example Cinema of Germany. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:10, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

  The film and the DVD are not separate entities though. PC78 (talk) 16:32, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

• Support serious English book sources use the German film name. In ictu oculi (talk) 19:35, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Post closure

I have been asked on my talk page to clarify the closure above. While I sympathise with the position of those who wanted to move the article, there was simply no consensus to be found in the discussion. I found that some of Roman Spinner's comments were persuasive, particularly this one, to which they was no direct response. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:21, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

I asked you personally for a reason, but if you bring it here I respond here. "Common name". I don't see how Divided Heaven is the common name for this film. We have 9 refs in the article, and 2 external links (not counting the dead link). One (!) of the refs calls it Divided Heaven, all others Der geteilte Himmel. The film has a history which is narrated in the article. Throughout that history, it's Der geteilte Himmel, including the sentence "In 1995, a group of historians and cinema researchers chose Der geteilte Himmel as one of the 100 most important German films ever made.". In the very end: a DVD, still in German but with English subtitles, the only thing where Divided Heaven is the name. - We can serve common name, or we can serve consistency, but not both, in this case. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:05, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

I don't wish to rehash the arguments from the discussion, but I believe if you could have shown a preponderance of English-language sources which used the German title, then I suspect the outcome would have gone the other way. I can't access all those references in the article for a variety of rreasons (some offline, one not found, one blocked by a web filter on my browser, ...) so I can't answer this definitively. As I'm sure you realise, English Wikipedia editors have a strong preference for English titles, unless there is convincing evidence to the contrary. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:38, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

The problem is that there are few English-speaking sources, but many in other European languages. Divided Heaven is not a common name because it is rarely used at all. It tells me somthing that even the English-language IMDb names the film in German. - I have no time to persuade when these are simple facts that don't need to be repeated. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:28, 13 May 2019 (UTC)