Is it appropriate to cite a paper in a language I don't understand?

Question

Some months back I got into a situation where a paper with information that I considered important to prove a point was in a language I cannot understand. Since it was important but not crucial, I ended up not using the paper. Except for its abstract, which was in English, the entire paper was in this other language. It had graphs and images that I could understand without knowing the language.

At the time, I was tempted to use Google Translate in order to get the general idea of the paper (in more detail than what is given in the abstract), while not necessarily trusting on the specific information that the translation gave me (it can give faulty results at times). Since this would still leave me with some measure of uncertainty — there was no way for me to be sure exactly what it was saying — I thought it better to just let the paper go.

But say that in a future situation I find a crucial paper in a language I don't understand: if I use Google Translate, using the paper in a situation that does not require specific information but only it's general gist, would citing it be ethically acceptable?

(It's almost the same situation as this question, but I'm not concerned with translating the entire paper, for this would take time/resources that I simply don't have access to.)

Answer 1

I think the fact that the paper is in a language you don't understand is somewhat of a red herring. Sure, it will affect the specific steps you'd take to try to understand the paper, but the ethics of "to cite, or not to cite" it is no different from a paper you don't understand written in a language you speak. You're generally supposed to provide a good-faith overview of the literature, with citations as appropriate. The fact that one paper is significantly harder to understand doesn't really change that.

My view is that it behooves you to, as far as possible*, and regardless of language, at least understand at a high level what the full papers you cite contain, and the parts of papers you use on a detailed level. Google Translate will be good enough in some cases, but for other cases it's better used as a starting point. If you find yourself doubting the machine translation it's certainly best to use it as a starting point. You might want to try to clarify uncertain points with the authors, ask a colleague (who might speak the language) for help, get a professional translation of parts of the paper, or use a secondary citation.

*In some fields they even study ancient languages to understand original texts. That might be overkill...

Answer 2

You cite earlier works either because you directly built on them, or to provide the background against which you are working, and to position your new contribution in the larger context of existing research.

You should be able to judge whether a given foreign language paper warrants inclusion for the second reason based on an English language abstract and/or Google translate. If it does, cite it.

Also: nothing keeps you from including a footnote, or a parenthetical disclaimer.

Foo and Bar (2019) discussed the ethnographic complexities of underwater basket weaving (as judging from the abstract; Foo & Bar [2019] is unfortunately in Amharic, which we do not speak).

Answer 3

Reiterating the main points (as I see it) of the other answers: if it's relevant, cite it... both to show your own awareness, and to acknowledge prior art, whether or not it exactly impinged on your own work.

That is, whether or not an individual can fully vet a piece of work, through difficulty with the ambient language or whatever, acknowledgement of its existence is very important, I think. Citing things is different from endorsement, and is different from a claim that one has fully checked all details, or even read the whole thing through. Just be clear, in the citation, what use you made of it, or did not.

Once again, straightforward-ness, honesty, are better guides much of the time (too bad not always... I know...) than stylistic prescriptions.

As an example to perhaps not cite: if you happened to read arguably crack-pot documents on arXiv (for math, for example) purporting (implausibly) to do amazing things in your specialty, I think you can justify not citing... if the author has insufficient credibility, and no one else with any credibility has vouched for it. But, yes, what the heck is "credibility"? :)

Answer 4

I would lean to including it. Of course you need to be careful about relying on something you can't completely read but this applies to everything (even just hard math). But I would lean to more cites than less since it helps future researchers.

It is not like you are endorsing everything or giving some huge gift to make a cite. You are trying to help people find info. They can still do some evaluation or even get into tangential ideas.

If you just need a datapoint (say transition temperature of a well known and noncontroversial substance), I think just taking the datapoint is fine without translation. Depending on how much more you need, you can try struggling through it with partial info, ask someone to look at it, use Google Translate, etc. If it is crucial, just pay for a translation and charge to your grant (this is not that hard, have done it).

Answer 5

If "to cite" is interpreted as "to include, in the 'works cited' or 'references' section of your academic work, a academic-publication-style-conformant bibliographic reference to a piece of scholarly work", it does not seem to be a good idea to include papers which you think you have understood by just reading its abstracts, its figures and tables (very likely that their titles are not in your language either) and machine-translated contents. You include a paper in your "works cited" section because you have carefully studied it, reflected upon it, analysed it against the theories and conclusions you've already known, or even carried out verification work, after which finding that the paper is of significant importance to your own study, positively or negatively. In this way you are weaving connections between past and present so that followers will see how the discipline has developed.

You do not include citations to show that you have consulted a lot of sources, or to let others know that you think this one is really important--important is a personal feeling unless quantified by, say, h-index; whether a paper is important or not is the reader's business, not yours. If a lot of authors do include this piece of literature in their works then that literature would naturally be important empirically.

That said, nothing stops you from including the article under concern in your own thesis: an academic-publication-style-conformant footnote or endnote would do well. Some professors even require their students to have both a "Works Cited" part and a "Works Consulted" part in their disseration (e.g. mine), and at least for humanities fields I have seen really serious scholars doing the same in their monograph. Also remember that the reference can be annotated as well.

Finally, you've said that

in a future situation I find a crucial paper in a language I don't understand: if I use Google Translate, using the paper in a situation that does not require specific information but only it's general gist

I don't see the underlying logical connection: if a paper is really crucial to you, your study must have partially relied upon it, how then is it possible that you would be citing it only for general, non-specific purposes? Additionally, suppose that other readers knowing the same languages as you have consulted your paper and also found the paper under concern worth reading, how then will you know that they are just reading it for general gist?

Answer 6

While agreeing with the other answers, I would add that you should cite the "original" work you used to base your work/analysis/paper on.

Subsequently finding a copy of the same paper translated by A. N. Other may lead to issues if the translation has errors or other assumptions not in the original.

That being said, you need to make it clear what you translated parts of the paper to mean as you probably made assumptions as well.