Help: testing a new plugin to support multilingual citation in Zotero

boan-anbo

https://github.com/boan-anbo/cite-non-english

Since Juris-M is no longer actively maintained, this plugin aims to add support for multilingual citations within Zotero.

It involves a lot of hacking, unfortunately, including but not limited to using technically invalid CSL styles.However, the plugin should just "work" and the correctness of the formatted output is covered by extensive testing.

Please help me further test it and/or suggest new features if you find it useful.

I try to avoid the more hacky approaches and build upon existing features of Zotero, CSL, and citeproc-js whenever possible. But in order to be faithful to the style guide requirements, I had no choice but to add some ugly hacks such as embedding stringified plugin config data in the CSL info section.

For this reason, I was also hoping to know what Zotero and CSL maintainers think of the plugin's approach. Any pointers regarding less hacky approaches and APIs that could better support multilingual citations would be greatly appreciated.

naphta

Hi boan-anbo! Thank you so much for this much-needed plugin! I am testing it with references in Chinese.

Correct me if I'm wrong. The non-English citation fields are not linked to the actual content in the Zotero reference. Am I correct?

Using your example, my library has Hua, Linfu as the author, and the title in pinyin:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u41756/l2i0eo1uz0tw7tkm231s.png

As the result shows, there should be no problem when producing the multilingual citation:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u41756/k6tt8o36n6k3r3wmc0h0.png

I find it easier to organize my library by using the romanized name in the author field, but I hope the citation will have the Chinese name when needed. So I hope this is the correct way of using your plugin.

Now, the main challenge I encounter when using this in my large library is that I need to enter the plugin fields manually for each reference. Suppose I have a long list of references by Hua Linfu. Is there a way to copy the author fields and quickly paste them into other references by the same author?

boan-anbo

Hi naphta! Yes, that's exactly the intended usage with decoupling the plugin multilingual fields from the Zotero native fields. Use whatever values (original, English, or romanized names and titles) that feel nature for your organization and its multilingual citation remains the same.

naphta

Thanks for confirming, boan-anbo!

How about pasting CNE fields into other references?

bknorn

Thank you @boan-anbo for this plugin. I am wondering if it is possible to use it for modifying citations for publications in different European languages. I publish articles in German, English, Italian etc. and need to localize mostly the publisher place (en: Rome, de: Rom, it: Roma ...), and sometimes the names of ancient authors (en: Aristotle, de: Aristoteles, it: Aristotele ...). This works very well with Jurism, but I have not figured out how/if I can do this with CNE.

AvenirZ

Dear @boan-anbo
Many many thanks for this highly practical and important plugin, which has been immensely helpful for multilingual research and writing. After some actual using, I'd be sincerely grateful if you could consider the following observations and (please forgive any errors in my usage and kindly offer guidance, since I have little knowledge of programming):

- Potential problems:
1. When the Item Type is set to 'Book', after completing all CNE fields, selecting the 'Chicago 18th ed. (note and bibliography)-cne citation style' in Word causes the footnote to incorrectly render the Zotero 'series' field instead of the Zotero 'Publisher' or 'cne-publisher original' field. for instance: "中國方志叢書 112" ought to be "成文出版社"

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u6175825/erppsl6rav6kq97fha8v.png
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u6175825/vauciazptt881m5trtj9.png
2. When the Item Type is set to 'Book Section', 'cne-publisher original' fields are not rendered in the footnote (probably the same problem with the first one).

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u6175825/yqja3amzvrfkeainrxpe.png
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u6175825/dxmxxh7akeso44wkufn6.png
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u6175825/8pryn78ercyxz0u71v4x.png
It seems the Zotero 'series' field is still coupled.

I wholeheartedly agree with your design of decoupling CNE plugin from the Zotero native fields, since the users habits of filling the native fields vary and the citation style tend to uniform.
Thank you very much again.