Bob,
"Translated from the French" is an unstructured description of the relationship of the resource to another expression (though it's not a very specific description) and is covered by RDA 24.4.3. See also the example at 26.1.1.3 "The English edition of a Spanish publication, which is also issued in French, German, and Arabic editions", which like the "Translated from the French" note describes in a very general way the relationship of the resource to four other expressions.
Thanks. You're probably right, it could count as an (albeit very general) unstructured description.
I'd say the codes in 041 are non-RDA (at least they don't fall under the definition of either structured or unstructured description in 24.4.3), but that doesn't mean that they can't be recorded in a MARC record (they aren't AACR2 either).
Good point. Actually, they also aren't mentioned in the German RAK rules, and it never bothered me before ;-)
But there is one more general point which comes to mind: If you think about it, the code in 041 $h gives exactly the same information as the "Translated from" note - only in coded form instead of natural language. But we've come to the conclusion that the note can be seen as an RDA element, but the code cannot (if we take the wording of 24.4.3 seriously).
I feel that RDA needs to become more aware of the existence of coded information. 6.11.1.3 (Recording language of expression) is a good example for this. If I understand the rule correctly, it only provides for recording the language of the expression in natural language, but not as a code. I accept that using natural language terms makes sense e.g. as part of an authorized access point (although, of course, you could still record a code, but show it to the users as natural language). But isn't it also a way of recording "language of the expression", whenever a language code is used in MARC 008 35-37?
So, why not have a more general rule in the first place and say, e.g. "Record the language or languages of the expression using appropriate means, e.g. an appropriate term in the language preferred by the agency creating the data"? Then the natural language terms could be used where appropriate, but the use of codes would also be covered by the wording of the instruction.
But perhaps I'm on the wrong track here altogether and have simply misunderstood the application of 6.11.1.3.
Heidrun -- --------------------- Prof. Heidrun Wiesenmueller M.A. Stuttgart Media University Faculty of Information and Communication Wolframstr. 32, 70191 Stuttgart, Germany www.hdm-stuttgart.de/bi
