This is a problem which occurs only in German, but maybe it could be applied to special characters of other languages, too.

In German, there is the letter "ß" for a "ss" sound following a long vowel. It's "Fluss" (German for "River", the "u" is short and pronounced kind of like the oo in "good"), but "Fuß" (German for "Foot", the "u" is long and pronounced like the vowel sound in "shoes").

The problem for the titles is that "ß" is a lower case letter only. When majuscules are used, it has to be substituted by "ss", a capital "ß" simply doesn't exist.
The cover for e.g. "Great Expectations" therefore says "GROSSE ERWARTUNGEN".



However, when the title isn't written in majuscules but in regular writing - like in the DVD title field of the profiles (or on this cover) - it's simply not correct, according to German spelling rules, to use the "ss" substitution.
Nevertheless, some people insist on putting the "ss" there, referring to the "exactly written as on cover" rule, saying "profiler rules overrule the spelling rule".
But is it really intended that way? According to the rules, the capitalization of words should follow the spelling rules of the particular language. So, why shouldn't that be applied to the capitalization of the letters themselves, too?

And, using the example above again, it's just stupid to say "ss because it's exactly as on the cover". Following that assumption, it would have to be "GROSSE ERWARTUNGeN".

What do you mean?

Yeah, but Credits are most of the time in majuscule writing, too. If we take the title from the credits, the capitalization has to be changed to follow the spelling rules (otherwise it would be, as I said, GROSSE ERWARTUNGeN). If we don't change the "SS" to "ß" there, but make a "ss" out of it, it doesn't follow the spelling/capitalization rules.

And, for German editions, another problem with this would be that the title doesn't appear in the credits at all. We usually see the original title in the credits because of international DVD masters.

I would imagine it would be sensible to capitalise as "Grosse Erwartungen", but I'm just not sure on "ß vs ss". If it's not displayed onscreen with the "ß", then I'd be inclined to write it as given on the cover, bad as it may be. It wouldn't be the first time a distributor abuses language on a cover.  My own pet peeve is "Footballers Wives". It's either that or "Footballer's Wives", never "Footballers' Wives" as would be correct. 

Thanks, Squirrel, that's what I was going for.

Nadja, it's not a spelling mistake by the distributor. As I said - when using the majuscule (all capital) writing which is often used for titles, it has to be "ss", as the "ß" doesn't exist as a capital letter.

But when we change back the title to standard upper and lower case capitalization, the substituting "ss" has to become "ß" again. (it's GROSSE, but Große)

I know, the whole "ss" / "ß" thingy is quite confusing for people who aren't German native speakers. 

I haven't studied German since school either; I do speak it on a daily basis though

Joking aside, I think Squirrel.God's reverse engineering is a great point and should earn Yes votes when put in the Contribution Notes.

Quoting Nadja:

Quote:
The rules read that the user should "Use the title from the film's credits." Seems to me that as long as it's the "ß" that appears onscreen, that belongs in the title field.

Unfortunately, this rule doesn't help much. It is quite common for german DVD-releases to take an international master. So, in all likelihood, the film's credit say Great Expectations instead of Große Erwartungen.

You mean something like this?



Well, that's Fraktur (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur_%28typeface_sub-classification%29), a very old typeface from the beginning of printing presses time.

This typeface is not really in regular use anymore (no, we don't have this capital S which looks like a G everywhere around us  ).
The youth probably can't read it at all. However, some ultra conservative newspaper still use it for some of their headlines. And last century, it was a big hit with the Nazis because of the "embodiment of the ancestral German virtues" etc. blah blah crap.

But you're back on topic without even knowing it.
The "ß" is a relic of the old days. In Fraktur typeset, it's the long lower case "s" combined with a lower case "z", representing an "sz" sound.

Unfortunately the people writing the rules where not aware that any conversion between upper case and lower case is based on a cultural interpretation (as they clearly demonstrated in a discussion on the old forum). For example using an English interpretation, the I gets a dot added when converted to lowercase while it doesn't in Turkish. In French accents are lost when going from lower to upper case. In Danish, it is optional to use capital letter at the start of each "major" world in the title, or only the first word (unless the word itself should use uppercase, for example if it is a name). The list goes on and on and on.

It is hence 100% impossible to convert to lowercase without applying the rules of a specific language (and even then there might me several versions).

So basically thereare two options:
1) Convert SS to ß according to German interpretation (where it makes sense obviously)
2) Convert SS to ss according to English interpretation (and other languages).

The rules do NOT state which option is correct. I would hence consider both to be according to the rule, and would simply correct my local version according to prefereces and lock it to avoid ping pong.