[Lingtyp] Citing text in European languages without translation

[joo at shh.mpg.de]

Dear all,

In linguistics, it is common to see in-text citation of text written in different European languages without giving translation, such as an English paper quoting French text without additional translation, assuming that the reader is able to read these languages.
I believe that this practice is problematic and we should not assume the readers to be able to read French, German, or other European languages (unless the topic of the paper is directly related to one of these languages). Why do we assume the reader to read a European language but not a non-European language such as Chinese or Turkish? Clearly the latter two are also languages used extensively in academic works, why should they almost always be given translation when European languages like French or German are very often exempted from translation?
I would like to know your opinion on this. I’m writing this on this mailing list because I believe this happens more often in typology than in many other subfields.

Regards,
Ian Joo
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