In this case, it is appropriate to cite only the English translation, for two good reasons: First, it is unlikely that readers interested in your topic will have the burning desire to examine the Russian original. Second, an original version of the cited book does not even exist, because the English volume is a collection of miscellaneous Russian essays from various sources put together by the editors. Therefore, you should cite after the book title, “Ed. Lawrence Michael O’Toole and Ann Shukman.” But if your thesis were on the current state of semiotic studies, then you would be obligated to proceed with more precision. Granted, you may not be able to read Russian, and readers can reasonably understand (provided your thesis is not on Soviet semiotics) that you are not referring to the collection in general but instead, for example, to the first essay in the collection. And then it would be interesting to know when and where the essay was originally published—all details that the editors provide in their notes on the essay. Therefore you will cite the essay as follows:
Lotman, Yuri M. “The Modeling Significance of the Concepts ‘End’ and ‘Beginning’ in Artistic Texts.” In General Semiotics, ed. Lawrence Michael O’Toole and Ann Shukman, 7–11. Russian Poetics in Translation 3. Oxford: Holdan Books, 1976. Originally published in Tezisy dokladov vo vtoroi letnei Shkole po vtorichnym modeliruyushchim sistemam, 69–74. Tartu, 1966.
This way you have not led readers to believe you have read the original text because you indicate your English source, but you have provided all the information needed to locate the original.
Also, when there is no translation available for a work in a language that is not commonly known, it is customary to include a translation of the title in parentheses directly after the original title.
Finally, let us examine a seemingly complicated case that at first suggests an elaborate solution, though this may be simplified depending on the context. David Efron is an Argentinian Jew who in 1941 published, in English and in the United States, a study on the gestural expressiveness of Jews and Italians in New York, called Gesture and Environment. In 1970 a Spanish translation appeared in Argentina with a different title, Gesto, raza y cultura. In 1972 a new edition in English appeared in the Netherlands with the title Gesture, Race and Culture (similar to the one in Spanish). From this edition derives the 1974 Italian translation titled Gesto, razza e cultura. How then should an Italian student cite this book?
Let us imagine two extreme cases. In the first case, the student is writing his thesis on David Efron. His final bibliography will contain a section dedicated to the author’s works, in which he must create references for all the editions separately in chronological order, and for each reference, he must specify whether the book is a new edition of a previous one. We assume that the candidate has examined all the editions, because he must check whether they contain changes or omissions. In the second case, the student is writing his thesis in economics, political science, or sociology, and he is addressing the questions of emigration. In this case, he cites Efron’s book only because it contains some useful information on marginal aspects of his topic. Here the student may cite only the Italian edition.
But let us also discuss an intermediate case, one in which the citation is marginal but it is important to know that the study dates back to 1941 and is not recent. The best solution would then be the following:
Efron, David. Gesture and Environment. New York: King’s Crown Press, 1941. Trans. Michelangelo Spada as Gesto, razza e cultura (Milan, Bompiani, 1974).
As it happens, the Italian edition indicates in the copyright that King’s Crown Press published the original in 1941, but rather than citing the original title, it gives the full reference to the Dutch 1972 edition. This is a matter of serious negligence (and I can say this because I am the editor of the Bompiani series in which Efron’s book appeared) because an Italian student might mistakenly cite the 1941 edition as Gesture, Race, and Culture. This is why it is always necessary to check the references against more than one source. A more scrupulous student who wished to document the fortunes of Efron’s volume and the rhythm of its rediscovery by scholars might gather enough information to compile the following reference:
Efron, David. Gesture, Race and Culture. 2nd ed. The Hague: Mouton, 1972. Trans. Michelangelo Spada as Gesto, razza e cultura (Milan, Bompiani, 1974). First published as Gesture and Environment (New York: King’s Crown Press, 1941).
In any case, it is evident that the extent of the required information depends on the type of thesis and the book’s role in its general argument (primary source, secondary source, marginal or accessory source, etc.).
Although the instructions above provide a foundation for creating a final bibliography for your thesis, here we are only interested in creating a good bibliographical reference in order to develop our index cards, and these instructions are more than adequate for this purpose. We will talk in more detail about the final bibliography in chapter 6. Also, sections 5.4.2 and 5.4.3 describe two different citation systems and the relations between notes and the bibliography. There you will also find two full pages of a sample bibliography (tables 5.2 and 5.3) that essentially summarize what we have said here.
Table 3.1
SUMMARY OF DOCUMENTATION GUIDELINES
BOOKS
* 1. Last name, first name of the author or editor [with information on pseudonyms or falseattributions].
* 2. Title: Subtitle of the Work.
3. Edition [if it is the second or later].
4. Volume number [or total number of volumes in a multivolume work cited in its entirety].
5. Series.
* 6. Place of publication [if missing, write “n.p.” which means “no place”]:
* 7. Publisher [omit if this information is missing from the book],
* 8. Date of publication [if this information is missing from the book, write “n.d.” which means
“no date”].
9. Trans. [if the original title was in a foreign language and there is an English translation, specify the translator’s full name, the English title, the place of publication, the publisher, and the date of publication].
JOURNAL ARTICLES
* 1. Last name, first name of the author.
* 2. “Article Title.”
* 3. Journal Title
* 4. Volume number, issue number [indicate if it is a new series],
5. (Month and year):
6. Inclusive page numbers.
BOOK CHAPTERS, CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS, AND ESSAYS FROM A
MULTIAUTHOR VOLUME
* 1. Last name, first name of the author.
* 2. “Chapter or Essay Title.”* 3. In
* 4. Title of the Multiauthor Volume,
* 5. First name and last name of the editor.
* 6. Volume number [if it is in a multivolume work].
* 7. Chapter or essay’s inclusive page numbers.
* 8. Place of publication:
* 9. Publisher,
* 10. Date of publication.
Table 3.1 summarizes this section by listing all the information that your references should contain. Note the required usage of italics, quotation marks, parentheses, and punctuation. Essential information that you should never omit is marked with an asterisk. The other information is optional and depends on the type of thesis you are writing.
Table 3.2
EXAMPLE OF A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INDEX CARD
Finally, in table 3.2 you will find an example of a bibliographical index card. As you can see, in the course of my bibliographical research I first found a citation of the Italian translation. Then I found the book in the library catalog and I marked on the top right corner the initialism for the name of the library, and the call number of the volume. Finally I located the volume and deduced from the copyright page the original title and publisher. There was no indication of the publication date, but I found one on the dust jacket flap and noted it with reservations. I then indicated why the book is worth considering.
3.2.4 An Experiment in the Library of Alessandria
Some may object that the advice I have given so far may work for a specialist, but that a young person who is about to begin his thesis, and who lacks specialized expertise, may encounter many difficulties:
1. He may not have access to a well-equipped library, perhaps because helives in a small city.
2. He may have only vague ideas of what he is looking for, and he maynot know how to begin searching the subject catalog because he has not received sufficient instructions from his professor.
3. He may not be able to travel from library to library. (Perhaps he lacksthe funds, the time, or he may be ill, etc.)
Let us then try to imagine the extreme situation of a working Italian student who has attended the university very little during his first three years of study. He has had sporadic contact with only one professor, let us suppose, a professor of aesthetics or of history of Italian literature. Having started his thesis late, he has only the last academic year at his disposal. Around September he managed to approach the professor or one of the professor’s assistants, but in Italy final exams take place during this period, so the discussion was very brief. The professor told him, “Why don’t you write a thesis on the concept of metaphor used by Italian baroque treatise authors?” Afterward, the student returned to his home in a town of a thousand inhabitants, a town without a public library. The closest city (of
