PERRLA/Guides/MLA 9/Translated or foreign-language article

How to Cite a Translated or Foreign-Language Article in MLA 9

For a journal article you read in another language, an MLA 9 Works Cited entry gives the title as published, capitalized the way that language capitalizes titles, then an English translation of the title in square brackets, followed by the journal name in its own language, vol., no., the date, the pages, and the DOI. For an article you read in English translation, the English title stands alone, followed by Translated by and the translators' names. The in-text citation is the author's last name and the page: (Arrogante 286).

The format

Last Name, First Name. "Title in the original language" ["English Translation of the Title"]. Journal Name, vol. #, no. #, Month Year, pp. #–#, https://doi.org/xxxx.

PERRLA MLA Experts · Updated October 27, 2026
Checked against the MLA Handbook, 9th edition. Every example is formatted by PERRLA's reference engine.

First, the easy way: PERRLA

Paste the article's DOI into PERRLA's reference search. PERRLA fills in the authors, the title as published, the journal, the volume, the issue, the date, the pages, and the DOI. It brings the article in as an ordinary journal article, so switch the kind to Foreign language or translated article and finish it with the steps below. Then check what came in against the article itself, especially the title's accents and, for a translation, that the translators came in as translators and not as authors.

Adding one by hand? Choose Journal, then Journal article, then the kind Foreign language or translated article. PERRLA adds a translator row to the contributors for you.

  • Read in the original language: leave the translator blank, type the title as printed in Article Title, and the English title in Translated Article Title. PERRLA adds the square brackets.
  • Read in an English translation: fill in the translators, type the English title in Article Title, and, if you want to show when the article first appeared, put that year in Original Publication Year.

Not using PERRLA yet? Here is how to build the same works cited entry by hand.

The parts of the works cited entry

1. Author

Start with the author's last name, a comma, and the first name as the article prints it. Keep accents, umlauts, hyphens, and two-part surnames exactly as printed.

Arrogante, Óscar.

Three or more authors: give the first author, a comma, and et al.

Mayer, Pia, et al.

For a translated article, the person who wrote it stays first. The translators never take the author's place.

2. Title in the original language

Copy the title in its own language, in quotation marks, spelled exactly as the article prints it. MLA capitalizes English titles headline style, but titles in other languages follow that language's habits: capitalize the first word, the first word of a subtitle, and any word the language always capitalizes. German capitalizes every noun, so those capitals stay; Spanish keeps words like de, la, and y in lowercase.

"Mediación de la resiliencia entre burnout y salud en el personal de Enfermería"

"Erleben von Pflegefachpersonen in Bezug auf durchgeführte und versäumte Pflege: Eine qualitative Studie"

For a title in a script other than the Latin alphabet, like Chinese, Arabic, or Russian, give the original characters, a romanized version, or both. When you give both, the original characters come first. The English translation goes last.

3. English title in square brackets

MLA asks you to translate titles your reader may not understand. Right after the original title, add an English version in square brackets, styled the way an article title is: in quotation marks and title case. The period goes after the closing bracket.

["Mediator Effect of Resilience between Burnout and Health in Nursing Staff"].

Many journals print an English title with the abstract. Use it when there is one. When there isn't, translate the title yourself; you don't need to say the translation is yours.

4. Journal name, volume, issue, date, and pages

Give the journal name exactly as it's published, in its own language and in italics. Don't translate it. Then vol., no., the date, and pp. with the page range, as for any journal article. A two-month issue gets both months.

Enfermería Clínica, vol. 24, no. 5, Sept.-Oct. 2014, pp. 283–89,

5. Translator (translated articles only)

For an article you read in a published English translation, the English title stands alone in quotation marks. The translators translated this article, not the whole journal, so MLA puts them right after the article's title: Translated by, their names in normal order, and a period. Translated is capitalized because it follows a period.

"Play and Its Role in the Mental Development of the Child." Translated by Nikolai Veresov and Myra Barrs.

No translator named anywhere in the source? Leave that part out and keep everything else.

6. Original publication date (optional)

When it helps your reader to know a translation is of an older work, MLA lets you add the year the work first appeared, right after the title. Vygotsky gave his lecture on play in 1933, but it was first published, in Russian, in 1966.

"Play and Its Role in the Mental Development of the Child." 1966.

The date in the journal's part of the entry stays the date of the version you read: 2016 for this translation. An article you read in its original language gets no original date, because you read the original.

7. DOI

End with the DOI as a full https://doi.org/ link, followed by a period, or the URL if there's no DOI.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enfcli.2014.06.003.

Examples

An article in Spanish

Óscar Arrogante's study of resilience and burnout in nursing staff, published in Spanish in the September–October 2014 issue of Enfermería Clínica. The journal's article page prints an English title under the Spanish one, so that's the bracketed translation.

  • In-text citation(Arrogante 286)
  • Narrative citationArrogante found that … (286).

An article in German, with four authors

A qualitative study of missed nursing care at a hospital in German-speaking Switzerland, published in German in the August 2024 issue of the nursing journal Pflege. The German title keeps its capital nouns, the bracketed translation is the English title the journal prints with its English abstract, and with four authors MLA names the first and adds et al.

  • In-text citation(Mayer et al. 209)
  • Narrative citationMayer et al. describe … (209).

An article translated into English

Lev Vygotsky's lecture on play, a key text in early childhood education, in Nikolai Veresov and Myra Barrs's 2016 English translation. Vygotsky stays the author, the translators follow the title, and 1966, the year the lecture was first published, can go right after the title.

  • In-text citation(Vygotsky 12)
  • Narrative citationAs Vygotsky argues, … (12).

In-text citations

An in-text citation for an article in another language works like any journal article: the author's last name and the page, with no comma between them. Nothing in the citation is translated or bracketed.

  • One author: (Arrogante 286)
  • Three or more authors: the first author and et al.: (Mayer et al. 209)
  • A translated article: the author, not the translator, and the page in the translation you read: (Vygotsky 12). MLA citations never take a year, so there's no original date here.
  • Name in your sentence: give the page alone at the end: Arrogante found that … (286).

Quoting a passage you translated yourself? MLA asks you to say the translation is yours: add a semicolon and my trans. after the page: (Arrogante 286; my trans.). You can skip the label for a single word or a short, simple phrase. Quoting a published translation needs no label, because you're quoting the translation itself.

Common mistakes

  • Clinical Nursing, vol. 24, no. 5,Enfermería Clínica, vol. 24, no. 5,Only the article title gets a translation. The journal name stays exactly as it's published, so your reader can find it.
  • "Erleben Von Pflegefachpersonen in Bezug Auf Durchgeführte Und Versäumte Pflege""Erleben von Pflegefachpersonen in Bezug auf durchgeführte und versäumte Pflege"English title case is for English titles. A title in another language follows that language's capitals: in German, the nouns and the first word, nothing else.
  • "Mediación de la resiliencia entre burnout y salud en el personal de Enfermería" (Mediator Effect of Resilience between Burnout and Health in Nursing Staff)."Mediación de la resiliencia entre burnout y salud en el personal de Enfermería" ["Mediator Effect of Resilience between Burnout and Health in Nursing Staff"].In the Works Cited entry, the translated title goes in square brackets, not parentheses, and the period comes after the bracket.
  • Veresov, Nikolai, and Myra Barrs. "Play and Its Role in the Mental Development of the Child."Vygotsky, L. S. "Play and Its Role in the Mental Development of the Child." Translated by Nikolai Veresov and Myra Barrs.The author keeps the author position. The translators follow the title, after Translated by.
  • (Vygotsky, 1966/2016, p. 12)(Vygotsky 12)That's APA. An MLA in-text citation is the author's name and the page, with no year and no p.
  • Arrogante, Oscar.Arrogante, Óscar.Keep every accent and umlaut in names and titles, exactly as the article prints them.

Quick checklist

  • Author's name as printed, accents and all
  • Title in the original language, in quotation marks, capitalized the way that language does
  • English title in square brackets right after it
  • Journal name as published, in italics and not translated
  • Translated article: Translated by and the translators right after the title
  • vol., no., the date, pp., and the DOI as a link

Questions students ask

Do I have to translate the title of a foreign-language article in MLA?

Usually, yes. MLA asks you to give translations of titles in other languages unless you're writing for readers who know the language, like a class taught in it. Put the English title in square brackets right after the original. Leave the journal name in its own language.

Can I quote a passage I translated myself?

Yes. Give your translation and add my trans. to the in-text citation after the page: (Arrogante 286; my trans.). That tells your reader the English wording is yours, not the author's.

The journal published the article in English and another language. Which do I cite?

Cite the version you read. If you read the English version, it's an ordinary journal article entry with no bracketed translation. If you read the other language, use the original title with the English title in brackets.

What if the title is in Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or another non-Latin script?

Give the title in its original characters, in a romanized version (written in the Latin alphabet, like pinyin for Chinese), or both, with the original characters first. Then add the English translation in square brackets. Whichever you choose, do it the same way in every entry.

What if the translator isn't named?

Leave the translator out and keep everything else. Check the whole article first, including the first page and the end notes, since translators are often credited there.

Do I have to include the year the original was published?

No, it's optional in MLA. Add it right after the title when knowing the work is older helps your reader, as with Vygotsky's 1966 lecture in a 2016 translation. The date in the journal part of the entry is always the date of the version you read.

Rules checked against the MLA Handbook (9th ed.), chapters 5 and 6 (the core and supplemental elements, and in-text citations), section 6.75 (my trans.), and the MLA Style Center's answers on when to indicate your own translation, supplemental elements (translators of one work in a collection), labels before contributors' names, why MLA capitalizes titles in other languages sentence style, works in nonroman scripts, and anonymously translated works. Example sources are the ones verified for the APA 7 page, rechecked on October 27, 2026: Arrogante against PubMed (25126983, issue dated Sep–Oct 2014) and Crossref; Mayer et al. against PubMed (38088250, Aug. 2024, all four authors) and Crossref; and Vygotsky against DataCite's record of its DOI and Monash University's Bridges repository (vol. 7, no. 2, 2016, pp. 3–25, with no month given).

PERRLA builds the entry for an article in any language, with the translated title in brackets and the translators credited.

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