BibTeX: citing both translation and the original

Question

I use BibTeX, the standard bibliography style "alpha". I wish to cite an article in Russian. The work has been translated into English, and I expect the majority of the readers will want to read the translation, not the original. Thus, I want to include bibliographic data for both the original and the translation in the same BibTeX entry. Is there an elegant way to do it?

Answer 1

If you don't mind using biblatex (which has a built-in field for translator and other additional features), you can produce something like the following:

Here's the code:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[style=alphabetic]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{biblio.bib}

\begin{document}

\cite{cicero}

\printbibliography

\end{document}

and the database biblio.bib:

@Book{cicero,
  hyphenation     = {german},
  author      = {Cicero, Marcus Tullius},
  editor      = {Blank-Sangmeister, Ursula},
  translator      = {Blank-Sangmeister, Ursula},
  afterword   = {Thraede, Klaus},
  indextitle      = {De natura deorum},
  title       = {De natura deorum. {\"U}ber das Wesen der G{\"o}tter},
  shorttitle      = {De natura deorum},
  language    = {langlatin and langgerman},
  publisher   = {Reclam},
  location    = {Stuttgart},
  date        = {1995},
  annotation      = {A bilingual edition of Cicero's \emph{De natura deorum}, with a German
            translation. Note the format of the \texttt{language} field in the database
            file, the concatenation of the \texttt{editor} and \texttt{translator} fields,
            and the \texttt{afterword} field}
}

Answer 2

For me, field note does the job. Try to see the result of the record in bib file (real life example)

@article{Bychkov,
  title = {Properties of a 2D electron gas with lifted spectral degeneracy},
  author = {Y. A. Bychkov and E. Rashba},
  journal = {JETP Lett.},
  volume = {39},
  pages = {78},
  year = {1984},
  note = {[Pis'ma Zh. Eksp. Teor. Fiz. {\bf 39}, 66 (1984)]}
}

Disadvantage: you should format translation record yourself.

Advantage: works with more or less all styles.