Re: [Bibulus-dev] Re: Many authors

[Thomas M. Widmann]

"Torsten Bronger" <address@hidden> wrote a long time ago:

> address@hidden (Thomas M. Widmann) writes:
> 
> > "Torsten Bronger" <address@hidden> writes:
> >
> >> As far as language dependent names are concerned: If you refer to
> >> something, you must give the original data.  So even if you cite
> >> the TeXbook in a Chinese journal, you must write Knuth with Latin
> >> letters.  The script is part of the bibliography entry and
> >> therefore I see no need for this sort of "language switchboard"
> >> that you propose.
> >
> > Sorry, no.  Let me try to reverse what you said:
> >
> >     So even if you cite his "little red book" in a English journal,
> >     you must write Mao Zedong with Chinese characters.
> >
> > See? ;-)  (You might argue this is nonsense, because you'd never cite
> > the original in an English journal, but rather the translation.  But
> > perhaps there is no translation.  Would you then expect the author to
> > be written in Chinese characters?)
> 
> Yes of course, because anything else would be useless.  To put it
> drastically, you need the glyphs from the cover.  If there is no
> translation, the interested reader would have to be able to read
> Chinese anyway.

I cannot find anything on authors in the Chicago Manual of Style, but
it says the following about titles:

  15.119: If a title is given only in translation, the translation is
     treated as the title, but the original language must be
     specified.

It doesn't tell when this should happen, but it's quite obvious it
sometimes does.  I've also had a look at several books citing books in
Russian and Georgian and other languages, and it's the rule more than
the exception that authors and titles are transliterated (if not
translated).

Bibulus must be able to accommodate this.

> > I know all of this sounds pretty theoretical, but it is an important
> > goal (for me) that Bibulus is able to support multilingual
> > bibliographies.
> 
> This is true, but XML with its unicode is 90% of this goal I think.
> A big part of language support is the layout flexibility, because
> not only the journals, but also the countries have different
> standards regarding this.

A very good point indeed.  If you look at the options of Custom-bib,
for instance, many of them are really not any better per se than the
standard settings, but they are required by some journal or other.

I also think we're going to get some rather fundamental change
requests when (if?) authors writing in non-Western languages start
using Bibulus...

> > And I think one of the most key insights of BibTeX was "write
> > once, use many times"; by this I mean that there should only be a
> > need for one bibliograhic entry for a book, no matter which
> > language the text it is cited in is in.
> 
> As far as e.g. notes and addresses are concerned, I see the need of
> language dependency.  But not in the case of things of the front
> cover.

I'm afraid it is required by some journals. :-(

/Thomas
-- 
Thomas Widmann          Bye-bye to BibTeX: join the Bibulus project now!
address@hidden              <http://www.nongnu.org/bibulus/>
Glasgow, Scotland, EU     <http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/bibulus/>