Quoting text from a country with different internationalization.

Question

I'm writing my doctoral dissertation here in the United States, and quoting some text from an English-language paper written in Germany. In Germany, the convention for writing numbers is to use a comma as the decimal separator (3,5 meters), but in the United States, the convention is to use a period as the decimal separator (3.5 meters).

Is it appropriate to reformat the numbers to the American convention when I quote this paper, or is it more appropriate to leave it as-is?

Answer 1

In academic writing, following style guides is particularly important for citations and notes.

Are you editing to APA style or another style guide? I'd absolutely check that first and do as the style guide instructs.

Your department may also have a style guide for you to follow. (I don't have a copy of APA or I'd check.)

Barring any such guidance: If you're quoting verbatim, I would leave the quotes as-is, keeping it clear that the quoted material's source clear, unless it causes confusion. If this happens more than once, you can leave a note explaining the difference if you feel it's needed. If you're paraphrasing, use the U.S. convention.

Disclaimer: I've not worked on academic papers, and don't know APA well, so get another opinion on that last part.

Answer 2

As it says above generally you should stick to the style guide you have been given. If this gives no guidelines then seek clarification from your evaluator, mentor, tutor etc.

If they have no idea then maybe you could suggest a popular method of substituting your own words into a quotation, the use of square brackets e.g.

"Because of his internal conflict, his sanity is questioned." ~A.Quote

becomes

"Because of [Hamlet's] internal conflict, his sanity is questioned." ~A.Quote

In your example:

3,5 meters ~original

is substituted with:

[3.5] meters ~altered to increase context and clear cultural confusion.

Answer 3

How about adding [sic], meaning "intentionally so written," to indicate that you are quoting something which is written "incorrectly"?

"3,5 meters [sic]"

Answer 4

If the original paper is in English but uses the German convention for decimals, and you are going to hold to that convention in the quoted material, I would put a footnote by the first use to explain you are doing so, then simply quote as is.

Alternatively, if the dissertation is for an English audience and you feel uncomfortable using the German numerical conventions, convert them and footnote the first usage explaining that to your audience. Either way you've covered the bases. You could also preface your first quote with the explanation, or explain your decision in a foreword. One explanation is enough, however. The quotations will get tedious if you call out each usage.

Whatever you do, it would be a good idea to run the idea by your advisor.

Answer 5

I've been thinking about it, and I think if you're only doing this a couple times, I'd recommend that you just not quote the original directly. It's a total cheat, and if you can find a better answer, I'd love to hear it, but...

Instead of:

German researchers found that only "3,5 percent of the world's population knew how to quote these numbers correctly". (Schmidt 74)

I'd say:

German researchers found that 3.5 percent of people world-wide knew the correct format for translating numerical quotations. (Schmidt 74)

I know there are times when direct quotations are absolutely necessary, but hopefully this isn't one of them?