Upgrade StorageFeature request: Add an function to translate items / add other language versions of items
Hi. I have a problem that affects most of the people, who write in more than one language: I some times need to create the bibliography in this language and sometimes in that, but the source (item) I cite is the same.
The current options I have are (in my understanding):
1) Create two items, one in language A and one in language B, even though they are actually the same article/book etc. The problem here is that if I have a file associated with the item, I can only attach it to one of the items, or otherwise Zotero will complain that I have a duplicate. (I'm not sure but having the same doi might tricker this, too.) And because I have so many of these needs-to-translated items, the duplicate items function becomes unusable to find the actual duplicates. Or, I could attach the file in only one of the items and then add the file as related to the other. This is cumbersome because I don't see the, let's say, pdf icon in the attachment field and if I want to see if I do have the pdf for this item, I always need to open the item and click the related tab. Yes, two clicks are too much, when the option is no clicks at all! And the related files won't open on double-click on the list view like attachments do.
2) Create one item and add both of the languages in the appropriate fields. This requires a lot of manual editing, especially for the bibliography, which partly undermines the point of using Zotero.
I have now opted for the latter. For example, I have this item in my library. The original is in Japanese and I sometimes cite it when writing in English, sometimes when writing in Japanese.
Kitahara 北原, Jirōta 次郎太 (2011) アイヌ語継承の現状 (The current state of Ainu language inheritance). In: Nobuko 暢子 Kibe 木部, Harumi はるみ Mitsui 三井, Kayoko 賀代子 Simoji 下地, Sichao 思超 Sheng 盛, Jirōta 次郎太 Kitahara 北原, and Masahiko 真寛 Yamada 山田 (eds.) 危機的な状況にある言語・方言の実態に関する調査研究事業 報告書 (A report on research project on the actual state of languages/dialects in critical condition), 91–97. 東京 Tokyo: 大学共同利用機関法人 人間文化研究機構 国立国語研究所 National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics.
If the bibliography is in English, I need to edit it so that it looks like this:
Kitahara, Jirōta (2011) アイヌ語継承の現状 (The current state of Ainu language inheritance). In: Nobuko Kibe, Harumi Mitsui, Kayoko Simoji, Sichao Sheng, Jirōta Kitahara, and Masahiko Yamada (eds.) 危機的な状況にある言語・方言の実態に関する調査研究事業 報告書 (A report on research project on the actual state of languages/dialects in critical condition), 91–97. Tokyo: National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics.
If the bibliography is in Japanese, I need to edit it like this:
北原 次郎太 (2011) 「アイヌ語継承の現状」木部 暢子、三井 はるみ、下地 賀代子、盛 思超、北原 次郎太、山田 真寛（編）『危機的な状況にある言語・方言の実態に関する調査研究事業 報告書』91–97、東京：大学共同利用機関法人 人間文化研究機構 国立国語研究所．
I guess you can see that this is a lot of work that could be automated if I could just create a translation of the items.
So, my suggestion to add a functionality of translating items fully in several other languages and when you cite the source, you could choose the language version to be used for example in the same place where you can now add page numbers, omit author, etc.
The current options I have are (in my understanding):
1) Create two items, one in language A and one in language B, even though they are actually the same article/book etc. The problem here is that if I have a file associated with the item, I can only attach it to one of the items, or otherwise Zotero will complain that I have a duplicate. (I'm not sure but having the same doi might tricker this, too.) And because I have so many of these needs-to-translated items, the duplicate items function becomes unusable to find the actual duplicates. Or, I could attach the file in only one of the items and then add the file as related to the other. This is cumbersome because I don't see the, let's say, pdf icon in the attachment field and if I want to see if I do have the pdf for this item, I always need to open the item and click the related tab. Yes, two clicks are too much, when the option is no clicks at all! And the related files won't open on double-click on the list view like attachments do.
2) Create one item and add both of the languages in the appropriate fields. This requires a lot of manual editing, especially for the bibliography, which partly undermines the point of using Zotero.
I have now opted for the latter. For example, I have this item in my library. The original is in Japanese and I sometimes cite it when writing in English, sometimes when writing in Japanese.
Kitahara 北原, Jirōta 次郎太 (2011) アイヌ語継承の現状 (The current state of Ainu language inheritance). In: Nobuko 暢子 Kibe 木部, Harumi はるみ Mitsui 三井, Kayoko 賀代子 Simoji 下地, Sichao 思超 Sheng 盛, Jirōta 次郎太 Kitahara 北原, and Masahiko 真寛 Yamada 山田 (eds.) 危機的な状況にある言語・方言の実態に関する調査研究事業 報告書 (A report on research project on the actual state of languages/dialects in critical condition), 91–97. 東京 Tokyo: 大学共同利用機関法人 人間文化研究機構 国立国語研究所 National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics.
If the bibliography is in English, I need to edit it so that it looks like this:
Kitahara, Jirōta (2011) アイヌ語継承の現状 (The current state of Ainu language inheritance). In: Nobuko Kibe, Harumi Mitsui, Kayoko Simoji, Sichao Sheng, Jirōta Kitahara, and Masahiko Yamada (eds.) 危機的な状況にある言語・方言の実態に関する調査研究事業 報告書 (A report on research project on the actual state of languages/dialects in critical condition), 91–97. Tokyo: National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics.
If the bibliography is in Japanese, I need to edit it like this:
北原 次郎太 (2011) 「アイヌ語継承の現状」木部 暢子、三井 はるみ、下地 賀代子、盛 思超、北原 次郎太、山田 真寛（編）『危機的な状況にある言語・方言の実態に関する調査研究事業 報告書』91–97、東京：大学共同利用機関法人 人間文化研究機構 国立国語研究所．
I guess you can see that this is a lot of work that could be automated if I could just create a translation of the items.
So, my suggestion to add a functionality of translating items fully in several other languages and when you cite the source, you could choose the language version to be used for example in the same place where you can now add page numbers, omit author, etc.
Thinks like the ability to specify an original and/or translated title are likely going to happen, but full support for translation (and for many fields also: transliteration) isn't something that's realistically in the cards in the foreseeable future I think.
- It is currently the best option to input all the language specific information, like the "URL" for example.
- It is the currently the best way to produce high quality citations in each language. You do not waste time when you want to cite.
- If you cannot import the metadata easily for each language from the connector (as it is not well formatted from the publishers most of the time), you can create a duplicate of the item in the default language and just modify the metadata that is changing.
- The drawbacks you are mentioning are not specific to multi-language citations. So they will likely be improved in the future.
- Even if another technical solution is adopted in the future, it should be possible to merge back the metadata fairly easily. Zotero does not use the attached files to determine duplicates, so this is not related. But the same DOI will indeed produce false duplicates: https://www.zotero.org/support/duplicate_detection
The main issue of adding the same file to multiple items is more the risk of spreading annotations to different places. At the moment, I just decide to annotate the file in the item in the primary language of publication.
But the ability to have a shared attachement is an old request which would solve this problem:
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/21717/how-to-attach-a-stored-pdf-attachment-to-multiple-items The ability to hide false duplicates is planned: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/103977/add-ability-to-mark-multiple-items-as-not-duplicate-rather-than-merge-them https://www.zotero.org/support/duplicate_detection
As a temporary workaround, I am using colored tags to identify false duplicates (with an emoji to differentiate them clearly), so that it will be easy to move them to false duplicates when the functionality is implemented.
The difficulty of navigating between related items is a general problem, encountered also for books and book chapters for example. One possibility would be to display related items as child items, but there may be better ways to improve:
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/99065/display-related-items-in-the-main-library-pane-as-child-items
I remember that some UI improvements are planned, but I don't know what is planned for the related items.