A multi-language citation must be tagged as one citation so that it will be seen as a single citation by citation services and referenced as one from within the document. Therefore, within a single citation, this Tag Set allows components in more than one language. A study of multi-language citations showed that some publishers cluster all the elements of one language together, some intersperse single-language clusters, and some alternate languages (source in English followed by source in Japanese). To handle this degree of variety, the @xml:lang attribute may be used freely on the elements within a citation to mark those as being in a language other than the primary language of the document.

Best Practice:

• A contributor name in more than one language should be placed inside a <name-alternatives> grouping element. This ensures that one author does not get cited multiple times for a single article. All the named alternatives in such a grouping represent the same author.
• An <article-title> in more than one language may either use the <trans-title> element for the second title or use the element <article-title> for both with an @xml:lang attribute. (Note: The element <trans-title> was preserved for backwards compatibility purposes.)
• A <source> in more than one language may either use the <trans-source> element for the second source, or use the element <source> for both with an @xml:lang attribute. (Note: The element <trans-source> was preserved for backwards compatibility purposes.)
• Other elements within a citation that are present in more than one language may use the @xml:lang attribute on each element to mark the language or just mark those in the second (and all subsequent) languages.