Localize terms in bibtex/biblatex entries

Question

Is there a way I could localize terms in my bibtex entries?

example:

note = {to appear}

I use a bibtex file for articles in english and german and it would be nice to replace the "to appear" in the bibliography with a localized string.

Answer 1

biblatex provides a pubstate field for publication states, so I suggest to use this field instead of the note field. For localized strings, use the \bibstring macro. See section 4.8 of the manual for details about \bibstring and section 4.9.2.11 for the publication states defined by default. If you really nead an additional toappear state, here's how to do it:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}

\usepackage{biblatex}

\NewBibliographyString{toappear}
\DefineBibliographyStrings{english}{%
  toappear = {to appear},
}
\DefineBibliographyStrings{ngerman}{%
  toappear = {im Erscheinen},
}

\usepackage{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@misc{A01,
  author = {Author, A.},
  year = {2001},
  title = {Alpha},
  pubstate = {\bibstring{toappear}},
}
@misc{B02,
  author = {Buthor, B.},
  year = {2002},
  title = {Bravo},
  pubstate = {\bibstring{inpress}},
}
\end{filecontents}

\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\nocite{*}

\begin{document}

\printbibliography

\end{document}

Answer 2

I would use the more standard pubstate={forthcoming} as an entry field, that is probably already localized in the biblatex style you are using, i.e.:

@article{Till2015,
author={Till},
title={The Philosophical Foundations of Alchemy},
journal={Alchemy Review},
pubstate={forthcoming},
date={2015}}