Usually a name stays the same in whatever language. So, whenever I quote a work by Knuth -- be it in an English article or a German one -- I will quote him as Donald E. Knuth
.
This is not always the case with ancient or medieval names. They are spelled differently in different languages. Two examples in English | German | French:
- Aristotle | Aristoteles | Aristote
- Thomas Aquinas | Thomas von Aquin | Thomas d'Aquin
This means that when I write an English article, I need a bib
-file that contains the English names, but when I want to write a German article, I need to go through my bib file and change the names accordingly. Depending on how often I in fact publish in English or German this could keep me busy and is prone to error.
So, I though, maybe I could have the different names already included in one single bib
-file and let biblatex
choose the correct name according to the primary language used in the document. Any ideas?
NB: I do not want to use in one single document both spellings Aristotle and Aristoteles (as the following MWE might make you think). Of course, if the article's primary language is English, then all the references to Aristotle will use the English spelling of his name. However, I want to be able to write articles in different languages, without (a) having to edit my bib
-files each time or (b) generally maintaing not one single bib
-file but two different ones, one for each language, or (c) having two distinct entries in one bib
-file
MWE
% !TEX TS-program = lualatexmk
\documentclass{scrartcl}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont[Ligatures=TeX]{Times New Roman}
\usepackage[ngerman, british]{babel}
\usepackage[babel]{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=verbose,abbreviate=false,backend=biber]{biblatex}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@book{aristotle:ross:1924,
Author = {Aristotle}, % It is here, I think, that something could be done, e.g., ...
Title = {Metaphysics}, % ... british=Aristotle,ngerman=Aristoteles,french=Aristote
Editor = {William David Ross},
Commentator = {William David Ross},
Introduction = {William David Ross},
Hyphenation = {british},
Location = {Oxford},
Publisher = {Clarendon Press},
Volumes = {2},
Year = {1924}}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\begin{document}
\selectlanguage{british}
Some English text.\footcite{aristotle:ross:1924}
\selectlanguage{ngerman}
Etwas Text auf Deutsch.\footcite{aristotle:ross:1924}
\end{document}