I've notice that Zotero has a problem with polish letter "ł/Ł"

Everytime i import anything with that letter it saves it as /l or /L. Does anyone else have a similar problem? I've tried reinstalling Zotero, but without any results.
  • You will need to say more about your computer system and the websites that present this problem. Are you using the Zotero import metadata button? Are you importing from a file?

    I have had no problem importing those characters from publisher sites nor from a database such as PubMed. There have been a few problems with importing (or copy/paste) from WorldCat.
  • edited February 9, 2018
    Yes, i'm using metadata button (both Chrome and Opera). I have this problem on Scholar, ResearchGate, CEEOL and other websites/databases. What is more, when i add a book via it's ISBN, this problem still occurs.
  • Could we get some example URLs? I'm not seeing this e.g. here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ł
  • OK, so I _am_ seeing this on google scholar, but not on any of the other ones. I think I know what the google scholar problem is and can take a look, but I'm very puzzled about the other sites.

    How about the Wikipedia article? Same issue?
  • Yes. But i believe i found temporary solution. I run Zotero in polish, but my system language is russian. When i switched my system language to polish everything worked great except the Google Scholar. I'm puzzled myself.
  • I use Zotero in English and system language is Czech. The problem is only with the Google Scholar.
  • Hey, I'm still having the same problem in March 2024 - any solutions found? Thanks
  • If your problem is with letter characters when you download an item directly from Google Scholar, try linking to the publisher from the GS listing.

    Because of the way that GS compiles the item list (mostly by capturing online versions of the publications themselves but also by grabbing citations with OCR from article reverence lists) the characters can be rendered in a peculiar way.
  • Thanks for your reply! Still, the ł letter appers correctly in the GS records, it only gets transliterated into /l in zotero records.
    Getting each item separately is possible but it's not a system solution to this problem. It doesn't match my workflow in which I want to build problem-focused bibliographies quickly. Crossref gets ł right, but it doesn't recognise all records from GS.
  • edited March 17, 2024
    GS and Crossref have different methods of populating their databases. CrossRef and OCLC Worldcat also occasionally have character encoding problems. This will extend to many other characters beyond the velarized L that you mentioned.

    I may be wrong about this but Zotero seems to do a really good job of recognizing and correcting character encoding even when it is different from what is declared in the page header. "Funny" characters displayed on the screen and in the webpage headers can miraculously be correctly captured by Zotero translators.

    The problem with Google Scholar is that the records do not necessarily have the same character encoding scheme even within the same record.

    The way that GS populates its database, by uncurated capturing of its contents from across the web, will cause errors. I could go on a long-winded further explanation of the problem with character encoding and how, from experience with my own online bibliographic database, even some publishers' websites get it wrong online and in the metadata they provide to databases but this isn't the place for that.

    A speed-priority workflow especially that based on uncritical collection of raw metadata from GS will have not only errors due to character encoding -- it will also have volume, issue, and pagination errors. It will have omitted author names and authors in the wrong order. Then, if you openly share your bibliography online, you will reinforce the error when GS scans your site -- further compounding the problem.

  • @DWL-SDCA -- sorry, but this just all isn't relevant here, better not to speculate when you haven't looked at the technical details yourself (or if you're speculating, be transparent about that).
    This has nothing to do with character encoding. Zotero uses BibTeX output from GS, which consistently renders ł as {\l}
    I assume that's correct and we just don't have this in our tables, but even if it's incorrect BibTeX, it's a simple fix on GS import, we'll take a look.
  • Looks like there's a bug either in the BibTeX returned by GS, or in the BibTeX translator that's being called underneath. Or, and BTW, in my case it turns it to "\l", not "/l" (this is on Linux).

    Specifically, here's what the GS translator gets as the BibTeX:

    @book{derbis1998poczucie,
    title={Poczucie jako{\'s}ci {\.z}ycia a swoboda dzia{\l}ania i odpowiedzialno{\'s}{\'c}},
    author={Derbis, Romuald and Ba{\'n}ka, Augustyn},
    year={1998},
    publisher={Stowarzyszenie Psychologia i Architektura}
    }

    And here's what the BibTeX translator conferts that to (which is essentially what is being used as the title at the end of the day):

    @book{derbis_poczucie_1998,
    title = {Poczucie jakości życia a swoboda dzia{\textbackslash}lania i odpowiedzialność},
    publisher = {Stowarzyszenie Psychologia i Architektura},
    author = {Derbis, Romuald and Bańka, Augustyn},
    year = {1998},
    }

    OTMH I don't know whether that {\l} is correct or not, if yes, then it must be the BibTeX translator, which does a lot of low-level parsing inside.
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