Change language

JonasLagneryd

Hi,

Right now I have the Swedish version of Zotero, but I would like to change to the English one as I am collaborating with friends abroad and need English in the reference output. Is there a simple way to change language without jeopardizing my so far collected references?
Kind regards,
Jonas

dstillman

Type about:config into the Firefox address bar, paste extensions.zotero.export.bibliographyLocale into the Filter box, and change that setting to 'en-US' to get citations in English.

JonasLagneryd

Thank you so very much!! Zotero is just so great! I followed your guidance and it works fine.
Kind regards,
Jonas

dbachmann

I had a hard time with this switching the firefox variable to no effect, until I realized the document language is set to the language currently set under firefox at the time the document calls zotero for the first time. After that, the document will stick to its language no matter what I do to firefox. So, in order to open one document in German and another in English, I need to
(1) set extensions.zotero.export.bibliographyLocale to "de"
(2) open a new document and cite some random reference
(3) set extensions.zotero.export.bibliographyLocale to "en"
(4) open another new document and cite some random reference

The first document will now use locale "de" and the second one "en" even if I set extensions.zotero.export.bibliographyLocale to Spanish or something. Is that correct?

Also, I have trouble customizing locale settings. Say I want to use "de", but I want to change the "and others" term to say "et al." even under "de" (instead of the default "u. a"). From the CSL specifications, http://citationstyles.org/downloads/specification.html#locale-options
I would assume all I need to do is insert this into my .csl file:

<locale xml:lang="de">
<terms>
<term name="and others">et al.</term>
</terms>
</locale>

But this seems to have no effect whatsoever, and the bibliography still shows "u. a."
Any advice on this?

adamsmith

the first issue sounds like a mess...
the second issue is trivial though
there is an "and others" and an "et-al" term. Most styles use the latter.
So
<term name="et-al">et al.</term> should do.

dbachmann

yeah, I am afraid this doesn't fix it. I was trying to be brief, but my actual "locale" looks like this:

<locale xml:lang="de">
<terms>
<term name="and others">et al.</term>
<term name="et-al">et al.</term>
<term name="and others" form="short">et al.</term>
<term name="et-al" form="short">et al.</term>
</terms>
</locale>

i.e. I am desperately trying to set everything to "et al." but I'm still getting "u.a."...

adamsmith

First, take out the form="short" - those don't exist.
Then, make sure your style is actually in csl 1.0.
Otherwise you'll have to switch around the <locale and <terms tags
http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/csl_syntax_summary#terms
Are you testing these in the test pane?
chrome://zotero/content/tools/csledit.xul
If nothing helps, post your style to gist.github.com as a public gist and paste the URL here.

dbachmann

switching <terms> and <locale> fixed it. So it turns out I'm not actually using csl 1.0!?
This explains how I can squint at the csl 1.0 specifications all day and still not be able to fix it :o/

Damn, do I need to specify the csl version in the .csl file's preamble? Mine simply says
"<style xmlns="http://purl.org/net/xbiblio/csl" class="in-text">", whereas the
example at the csl 1.0 specification page adds a parameter version="1.0".
I seem to have been working under some unknown default version of csl all the time. If If I now set the version to 1.0 I get other errors, apparently I will need to fix my style to comply with 1.0, but at least that's the mystery solved.


Anyway, thanks a lot for your very quick and competent help!

Rintze

See also http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles#the_csl_081_to_10_upgrade

Michael Frenzel

Hello Dbachmann,

which csl comands have you used finally? I got the same problem! Might I have a look into your style to check the et-al versus u.a. problem?

Lots of greetings from Dresden,

Michael

haggi741

Dear Michael,

I think that I had the same problem as dbachmann, the problem was solved by switching the terms and locale tags in the csl file:
<terms>
<locale xml:lang="de">
<term name="et-al">et al.</term>
</locale>
</terms>

Cheers from Karlsruhe

dbachmann

yes, sorry for not replying -- I have not solved this at all so far, I simply stuck to using csl 0.81 because it did what I needed it to.
I'm still going to have to tackle this some time soon.
Regards from Zürich :)