Citation Key for Japanese authors becomes automatically converted to Chinese romanization

Darren McDonald
In the "info" panel of the beta version of Zotero, any papers that have Japanese (kanji) names as authors get automatically converted to Chinese roman characters. I was expecting to have the proper Japanese romanization.

For example, Zotero currently converts the name "田中" into "tainzhong". In Japanese romanization, it should be "tanaka".

This becomes very confusing to me when I am working on a paper.

Is there any way to correct citation keys?
  • emilianoeheyns
    edited November 16, 2021
    If you have BBT installed, enable kuroshiro romajization in the preferences, and set the language of the item to ja or Japanese. There is unfortunately no reliable way to detect the appropriate romanization, which is why it is steered by the language field.
  • Darren McDonald
    @emilianoeheyns
    Perfect! This is actually the type of setting I was looking for! Thanks soooo much.

    Just one more quick related question, in the case where BBT gets the romajization wrong, is there a way to manually make corrections?
  • emilianoeheyns
    Only in a very roundabout way; by reporting the problem to the kuroshiro project. For incidental stuff you could use a `replace=` filter, but that's unwieldy for more than just one or two characters.
  • qqbb
    edited November 16, 2021
    is there a way to manually make corrections?
    @Darren%20McDonald: Right-click an item in Zotero's middle pane. In the item's context menu, choose "Better BibTeX" -> "Change BibTeX key...". Manually enter the correct citation key and click "OK". This will "pin" the citation key to the entered value, which is written to the Extra field with a "Citation Key: " prefix.
  • emilianoeheyns
    ... and which you can make any corrections to that you want, and they will stick. Very good point.
  • Darren McDonald
    @qqbb Should this result in a change in an item's "Citation Key" at the top of the "info" pane? When I try doing this, it does not show the change. I may be doing it all wrong.
  • emilianoeheyns
    It should, yes. When the cite key is in extra, the key at the top should always and automatically change to that, and should display a pushpin icon beside it.
  • qqbb
    You can't directly edit the the "Citation Key" at the top of the "info" pane. Write a new line with "Citation Key: test" to the Extra field at the bottom of the "info" pane. This will pin the citation key. BBT provides options in the item's context menu accessed by right-clicking the item in the middle pane (or "items list") to do this more conveniently.
  • Darren McDonald
    Thanks @qqbb and @emilianoeheyns. Your valuable guidance has proved invaluable. :)

    For those who are new to Zotero and come across this post, let me leave a little comment on how to be up and running using the method I understood.

    1. Install the add-on called "Better BibTeX (BBT)". The add-on can be downloaded at the following website:
    https://retorque.re/zotero-better-bibtex/

    2. Enable the plug-in and restart Zotero

    3. In Zotero's preferences, select Better BibTeX tab -> Citation keys -> check box "Apply kuroshiro romajization in Japanese names/titles. Uses a lot of memory."

    4. Once restarted right-click on an item (that is in Japanese) -> Better BibTeX -> Refresh BibTeX Key. The citation key information in the item's panel should now have romajization.

    5. If Better BibTeX plug-in creates an incorrect romajization, right-click on the item, and in the "info" pane in the "Extra" area (close to the bottom of the list) type "Citation: " + correct romanjization. This should correct Citation Key in the item's "info" pane.
  • emilianoeheyns
    To add to that - if you right-click items and choose "pin citation key", BBT will write the current key to the extra field, which you can then edit if needed.
  • qqbb
    edited November 16, 2021
    @Darren%20McDonald: If the kuroshiro option isn't working for you, you could consider opening an issue on GitHub to debug this further with @emilianoeheyns.

    I'm not using the kuroshiro option, but in a quick test it first didn't seem to work. I then had a look at this issue and realized that my usual citation key format was problematic. When I changed my citekey format to [auth:capitalize][year], the romanization seemed to work. With this, my test item with author "田中" gets the citekey "Tanaka2021".
  • qqbb
    edited November 16, 2021
    I think you were misunderstanding this:
    5. If Better BibTeX plug-in creates an incorrect romajization, right-click on the item, and choose "Better BibTeX" -> "Change BibTeX key...". Manually enter the correct citation key and click "OK".

    Alternatively,     in the "info" pane in the "Extra" area (close to the bottom of the list) type "Citation Key: " + correct romanjization. This should correct Citation Key in the item's "info" pane.
    In the Extra field, you might have been missing the Key in the "Citation Key: " prefix.
  • emilianoeheyns
    Kuroshiro needs a restart of zotero after turning it on, but if that doesn't work, please do file a report.
  • Darren McDonald
    @qqbb Ah, I see now what you were explaining.

    >5. If Better BibTeX plug-in creates an incorrect romajization, right-click on the >Item, and choose "Better BibTeX" -> "Change BibTeX key...". Manually enter the >correct citation key and click "OK".

    When "Change BibTeX key ..." is chosen, a little pop-up box appears with the Citation Key that can be edited.

    For some reason, the pop-up box did not appear for me on my Mac at home. I am at my work Mac and saw an update come in for the beta Desktop version. I updated, and now the magic pop-up window appears. :)

    Thanks again for all the help and guidance. And that goes for @emilianoeheyns as well. :)
  • qqbb
    Note that the kuroshiro option should work as expected for your initial example:
    I'm not using the kuroshiro option, but in a quick test it first didn't seem to work. I then had a look at this issue and realized that my usual citation key format was problematic. When I changed my citekey format to [auth:capitalize][year], the romanization seemed to work. With this, my test item with author "田中" gets the citekey "Tanaka2021".
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