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Language Support
Zotero's Unicode support allows you to import, store, and cite items in any language. You can change the language of both the Zotero user interface and the citations and bibliographies created by Zotero. Finally, there is an unofficial multilingual version of Zotero, which supports storage of item metadata in more than one language (transliterations and translations).
Switching Languages
Zotero
In Zotero, the interface language defaults to matching the operating system's language. To override this and use English instead of the operating system's language, open Preferences→Advanced→Open about:config), and set intl.locale.matchOS
to false. To choose a language other than English, search for general.useragent.locale
and change it to the appropriate language code (e.g., fr-FR
for French). Once you've made the necessary changes, restart Zotero.
Citations and Bibliographies
To keep your Zotero UI in one language, but use another language for the citations and bibliographies created by Zotero, simply select the citation language you'd like to use from the appropriate location:
- The “Create Bibliography from Selected Item(s)” dialog
- The word processor integration plugin's document preferences window
- The Quick Copy section in the Export pane of the Zotero preferences
Contributing Translations
You can report mistakes in Zotero's translations in the Zotero forums. If you would like to make larger contributions (like translating the Zotero client into an as of yet unsupported language), see the developer's instructions for localization.
Juris-M (formerly MLZ)
Juris-M, formerly MLZ, is an unofficial version of Zotero that allows you to store transliterations and translations of names, titles and other fields, and create citations and bibliographies that show this information (e.g. “Soseki, Wagahai ha neko de aru [I am a cat] (1905-06)”).
Juris-M is developed by Frank Bennett, a Zotero user. If you would like to try out Juris-M, see the project webpage.