19
Recommendations for books in languages other than English
Aug 13, 2021
The title basically. Even though I have more non-English books on my shelves than English books, I only get English recommendations (and yes, I have written Dutch in my reading preferences). Would be nice if the algorithm can be changed so it will be less biased to English books.
Comments
I came here to make the same request but found that someone had already suggested it. Is the situation still the same? I would really like to see books from my own country, or books translated to finnish but which have no English translation available, in the recommendations as well. Currently its only books in English, and even though they might interest me, many of them are so niche that they arent available here in the libraries or book shops... Which makes the recommendations pretty much useless for me.
oksi It's still the same for now since we've not been able to prioritise language features much in recent years but it will be reviewed at some point.
Hi tamara! This is something that we won't be able to do for a very very long time. The way we've done our recommendations, we'd essentially have to develop a new model for each language and the team is only really fluent in English. We're still working on our current algorithm every day and it's already been in development for almost two years. We may be able to do a better job sooner of showing you editions in languages you read in, but the base recommendations will be based off of English books.
Oh, that's a little disappointing to read as someone who also reads in four languages.. I figured the recommendations were mainly based on the tags in al categories, which would be the same in other language. But I understand if it is much more complicated than that.
To clarify: we'll be able to show you books in other languages that you read in, but a book will be unlikely to show up in our recommendations algorithm if no English edition of it exists!