How to activate the "language" field?

Hello,
Please excuse this newbie question.

I've just started using Zotero and like it very much.

However, I noticed that when I specify the language in note, it doesn't show up in the bibliography citation. (I'm using Chicago full note)

Is there a way to specify either in the program or the style sheet itself that if specify a language in the language field that it should provide it in the bibliography output?

Thank you.
  • You can´t show the language from the language field in a citation (and while that'd be a problem for some citation styles, it's not something that Chicago style requires you to add, see e.g section 14.98 in the current edition)
  • Thank you for the prompt reply.

    Too bad about language designation. Will have move away from zotero then.

    The section you mentioned (14.98) does not mention the mandatory requirement.

    Here it is from section 14.99

    If a title is given only in English translation, however, the original language must be specified.

    3. N. M. Pirumova, The Zemstvo Liberal Movement: Its Social Roots and Evolution to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century [in Russian] (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo “Nauka,” 1977).

    Chu Ching and Long Zhi. “The Vicissitudes of the Giant Panda, Ailuropoda melanoleuca (David).” [In Chinese.] Acta Zoologica Sinica 29, no. 1 (1983): 93–104.
  • Enter “in Chinese” in the Extra field like this:
    Medium: In Chinese
  • edited November 19, 2018
    If a title is given only in English translation, however, the original language must be specified.
    That's a great way to make it hard for readers to actually locate the article. As someone who spends most of my time looking at multi-lingual sources, it's a real pain when someone doesn't cite the original and I have to guess at how to reconstruct the title through backwards translation. (Admittedly, that applies more to older scholarship not as readily identifiable by the journal name, DOIs, etc., but if you also obscure the journal name in this way and do not have a DOI, the problem remains.) The way I read the style there, it's giving you the option of only citing it this way, but isn't restricting you from citing in the original as well.
  • Personally, my recommendation would be to cite the original title, then provide a translation in square brackets (ala the APA style recommendation).
  • @bwiernik, yes absolutely. That's a good solution. Depending on font issues (hopefully not too many these days) and publisher expectations, there's also a question of whether to cite in transliteration for non-Latin scripts, and that can also make things more difficult for the reader. But providing both original title and translation (or all three: also including transliteration of title) is very helpful.
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