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Sorry for another Biblatex question! Is there a package option or easy way to turn on/off fields such as origlanguage or translator?

I have fairly complete bibliographic entries in my bib file but was curious if there is a way to not print all those details in certain references.

For example using the following bib entry with biblatex-chicago:

@book{Feyerabend:1983,
    location = {Frankfurt am Main},
    author = {Feyerabend, Paul},
    langid = {ngerman},
    origdate = {1983},
    origlanguage = {american},
    publisher = {Suhrkamp},
    title = {{Wider den Methodenzwang}},
    translator = {Vetter, Hermann},
    date = {2004}}

produces: enter image description here

I know that I can manipulate the use of origdate with cmsdate. Is there a similar way to turn on/off the use of translator or origlanguage so that it would print the most basic reference, i.e. Author. Date. Title. Location. Publisher.?

totti
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  • I have no experience with the biblatex-chicago package nor how it is meant to look as in-text citations (in my code it is including every detail - is this typical?) but if you set the following it should do as you require: \DeclareFieldFormat{origdate}{}

    \DeclareFieldFormat{origlanguage}{} \renewbibmacro*{bytranslator+others}{} (the final one worked on my MWE I created from your bib file but without knowing your full code nor the citation style in depth this is the best I have!)

     –  Mar 23 '22 at 22:27

1 Answers1

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Generally speaking, most styles will not have an option to get rid of every single field they print. The standard styles and most contributed styles have options for DOIs, eprints, URLs and the ISBN, but not for a lot more.

The easiest and most sustainable way to get rid of fields is via Biber sourcemapping

\DeclareSourcemap{
  \maps[datatype=bibtex]{
    \map{
      \step[fieldset=origdate, null]
      \step[fieldset=origlanguage, null]
      \step[fieldset=translator, null]
    } 
  }
}

See also How to omit address field while using biblatex which also includes a discussion of alternative (but generally inferior) methods to get rid of certain fields.

If you want to get rid of larger chunks of the bibliography output, it is also possible to look at the code directly and see if it would be an alternative to redefine certain macros to print nothing.

LaccaseTVersicolor suggests \renewbibmacro*{bytranslator+others}{} in the comments.

Of course it may be tedious to chase after all the different macros and fields and it may not always be that simple to find suitable redefinitions.

If your desired bibliography format is much simpler than what your current style offers, it is an option to just completely overwrite the existing driver with a less wordy definition that prints fewer fields.

moewe
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