Foreign Language Quoting

[Reki]

I've never used foreign text in my writing until now, so I'm not exactly sure how to quote and reference it. Should I translate the quote into English in the text? Or should I have it in the original language and have the translation as a footnote along with the citation? Also, should I translate the title of the book into English in the citation?

 

I'm using the Chicago Manual of Style. I've tried looking online for the rules regarding foreign language quoting but haven't found anything helpful.

 

Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks.

[Rogue856]

I use foreign language sources for nearly all my research and just use my own english translation within the text with a note that all translations, unless otherwise noted, are done by the author in the footnote for the first bit that I've translated. Usually I'll have talked about sources and lack of translation in the intro anyways. I do not translate the titles of books or articles in footnotes. I've never been corrected on it so that's what I've stuck with. I would say it depends on what you're translating too...my foreign language primary documents are mostly newspapers so the translations are relatively straight forward. If I translated something in a more literary style I would probably put the foreign language text in the footnote.

[dr. t]

I've never used foreign text in my writing until now, so I'm not exactly sure how to quote and reference it. Should I translate the quote into English in the text? Or should I have it in the original language and have the translation as a footnote along with the citation? Also, should I translate the title of the book into English in the citation?

 

I'm using the Chicago Manual of Style. I've tried looking online for the rules regarding foreign language quoting but haven't found anything helpful.

 

Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks.

It depends on where the thing is going. Different journals/publishers will have different standards. For a professor, I just ask them what they prefer. I'll always keep the foreign language (usually Latin for me) if the point I'm making ties directly into the original text itself.

[kdavid]

Re: whether or not to translate the name/title of the source being translated

 

In many cases we're writing for a specific audience which is likely already familiar with the language from which we're translating. In these cases, translating wouldn't be necessary.

 

However, if you're writing for a larger audience, translated and original titles would be convenient.

 

When I'm writing in English (as opposed to Chinese), I write the pinyin, or romanized version of the Chinese text, along with my English translation [in brackets] after the pinyin. (Though I prefer characters over pinyin when reading others' works.)