What if the 'et-al' term is literature locale dependent?

voidmous
edited September 21, 2016
According to the Chinese national standard GB/T 7714-2005 http://www.syxb-cps.com.cn/UserFiles/File/GB-T 7714-2005.pdf , the et-al term is dependent on the locale of the literature.

For instance, if the paper is written in language other than Chinese, i.e. doesn't have a Chinese title, the et-al term is 'et al'. But if it does have a Chinese title, then the et-al term should be '等'.

I've never seen any .csl file which can properly render the correct term as suggested, actually there aren't many style files for Chinese, so I guess this is also a problem for developers? Can anyone give me a hint?
  • voidmous
    I know I can edit the bibliography text for each literature manually, but it's troublesome and it'll break the sync link between MS Word and Zotero, right?
  • adamsmith
    CSL can't currently take account of the language of a source, so not possible, no.

    (The processor Zotero uses to interpret CSL actually _can_ handle this, so if you do want to customize the style accordingly you can and I can give you some pointers. It requires correct language codes in the language field in Zotero)
  • voidmous
    Since it's the national standard, most students have to follow the rule to finish their graduation theses, and I guess some of them like me are suffering from this. Please let me know if you know how to hack this. Think about the population, maybe you're helping millions of people :smile:

    Do you suggest that some option of Zotero can help?
  • fbennett
    It's done with some non-standard structures in the CSL code of the style. Is there a particular style in the CSL repository that you would like to have adapted in that way? Also, would the same treatment other terms (editor, translator, etc.)?
  • voidmous
    @fbennett I'm currently using this style https://www.zotero.org/styles/chinese-gb7714-2005-numeric and the bibliography generated by it is as follows:

    postimage

    As you can see, it looks very bizarre if Chinese characters mixs with non-Chinese sources.
  • voidmous
    https://www.zotero.org/styles?q=GB/T Not too many choices for us and they all have the same problem.
  • voidmous
    @fbennett I took a quick look-up inside this standard and found 4 terms language dependent:

    et al ----> 等
    3rd ed. ----> 3版
    [S. l.] ----> [出版地不详]
    [s. n.] ----> [出版者不详]

    'S. l.' stands for sine loco and 's. n.' stands for sine nomine.
  • fbennett
    Okay, I've made a separate copy of the style, and done some changes to prepare for a multilingual version. What languages do you need to see supported in it?

    (It won't be quite as simple as plugging in terms localized to the language of an item. The style currently assumes that content will all be Chinese, so spaces will need to be added in appropriate places; and the style is coded in a way that will make that hard to control, so you should expect to encounter some bad formatting in early use.)
  • voidmous
    @fbennett So it's still not possible to mix Chinese and non-Chinese sources and set terms accordingly, right? Thank you for your work, I'll have a try.
  • adamsmith
    yes it is -- he's asking you a very specific question to prepare the style:
    What languages do you need to see supported in it?
  • voidmous
    English is prefered, thanks again.
  • adamsmith
    So English and Mandarin? Note that this will only work with the proper language codes in the language field of Zotero, i.e. "en" (or "en-US", "en-GB" etc.) for English and zh-CN (I believe) for Chines respectively.
  • fbennett
    I'll prepare a version that works for English and defaults to Chinese. With that setup, if you cite resources in non-English languages, they will be cited with Chinese terms---but it's easy to extend the style to cover additional languages, so you can just ask for that when it becomes an issue.
  • voidmous
    @fbennett That would be great, really appreciate your work!
  • fbennett
    I have a file ready, if you send me your email address as a private message (using the "Inbox" link at the top of this page), I can send it to you.

    I'd be a little concerned that the original style may not accurately implement the rules of the underlying style guide (for Chinese, even). The cites I'm getting in previews seem to include or omit spacing and punctuation at random with changes in the item type. I fear that you may not be very happy with it, which is why I feel a little better sending it to you by mail, rather than distributing it via the Juris-M website.

    (If it does prove unsatisfactory, and you are interested in learning how to code styles that perform more reliably than this one seems to, let us know. Give the language requirements, I don't think we can do much more work on this one directly, but I'd be happy to advise if you decide to do any repair/recoding work yourself.)
  • Shijiawang
    @fbennett
    Could you please send me the mentioned CSL for GB-T 7714-2005?
    Thanks a lot!.
    My e-mail is wsj_zju@126.com
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