language settings: non-translate et al.

Gitty K
when I change the language settings for Zotero in about:config "et al." seems to be translated to it's e.g. German equivalent (u.a.) no matter which style I use. However, only some journals would use "u.a." while others require the Latin expression. Is there any way to adjust the settings for that? Or is there any possiblity in CSL to make an exception for et al.-translation?
(sticking to English settings wouldn't help as other things always have to be translated, like "ed." or "and")
  • mark
    Isn't this CSL business? A CSL file for a German journal that prefers u.a. should duly generate u.a., etc. I don't see why that should be dependent on translations of the Zotero interface. Citation styles are a wholly different thing than the user's interface to the citation manager. The former are journal-dependent, while the latter is user-dependent. Seems not a good idea to allow the two to intermingle.
  • dstillman
    I believe Gitty was referring to Zotero's export.bibliographyLocale setting, which controls the localization of the bibliographic output, not the Firefox user interface setting. But yes, if a style always requires "et al." rather than the localized term, the "et al." should just be hard-coded in the style itself.
  • Gitty K
    edited November 6, 2008
    Thanks for the quick response. If it can't/shouldn't be done via localization settings, so how can it be hard-coded in the style itself? Perhaps someone could provide an example CSL-sequence for this, that I can paste into an existing style-file. That would help me a lot.
  • dstillman
    What style(s) are you referring to? If it should be fixed, we'll fix it for everybody. Documentation from the publisher(s) would be helpful.
  • Gitty K
    I believe there is no style for a German journal in the repsitory. I am working on one, but that may still take some time and could be solved when it's ready.
    However, for writing papers in classes it would be handy for users to be able to adjust this for some of the main existing styles (e.g. ASA or APSA in my case or Chicago and Harvard). But I guess there would then have to be language specific versions of all styles eventually and wouldn't that limit the flexibility of CSL styles?
  • dstillman
    However, for writing papers in classes it would be handy for users to be able to adjust this for some of the main existing styles (e.g. ASA or APSA in my case or Chicago and Harvard)
    Can you explain why this would need to be adjustable by users?
  • Gitty K
    edited November 6, 2008
    For papers in class I'm more likely to use one of the more general styles like the ones mentioned above and I'd like to have the flexibility to swap between et al. and u.a. while following these styles in all other respects.
    I guess what I'm trying to say is that it might be easier to have some kind of option for end users to change the setting so as to have et al. translated or not (e.g. by explaining here how it's done in CSL or by adding an about:config option if that's at all feasible or something else...) rather than providing variants of each single existing style in the repository (which, I assume, may or may not take some time and effort to programe depending on competing priorities. But maybe I'm overestimating this.) Just a thought and maybe there's someting I don't quite understand, in the end the what matters to me is to be able to change between et al and u.a. no matter how that's achieved.
  • tillheilmann
    Gitty, I don't have a solution for your problem but as you are obviously working on a style for a german journal you might check out my styles "tah Geistes- u. Kulturwissenschaften" and "tah Sozialwissenschaften". They are not meant for a specific journal or publisher but are generic german styles that correspond more or less to my liking. Also I might change their behavior at any time, so use at your own risk. Like you I had to change some terms ("accessed" from "zugegriffen" to "zugegriffen am") by hard-coding them and you can see this in the source code of the styles.
  • Gitty K
    Thanks for sharing this with me! I'll have a look at your styles and give it a try.
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