change reference appearance of apacite (but only for german language)

Question

I have a xyz.bib file like that:

@article{name,
title = {This Is An English Title}
}
@article{name2,
title = {This Is Test German Title}
}

According to the "APA-Rules" the produced entries have only capital letters at the beginning of the title. But for german titles this rule may not apply (don't ask me why).

I want the title to be taken as it is in the bib file. (upper and lower case )

How can I change that using the apacite package like that:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{apacite}
\begin{document}
Random citation \cite{name} embeddeed in text.
Random citation \cite{nam2} embeddeed in text.
\bibliography{xyz}
\bibliographystyle{apacite}
\end{document}

I thought about an lang= xyz-tag in the bib-file, but couldn't get it to work.

EDIT:

BibTeX loses capitals when creating .bbl file

I have found a solution. I have probably thought much too complicated.

Answer 1

apacite can be configured to retain the original capitalisation (with \APACrefatitle), but it does not support per-entry switching.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{apacite}
\renewcommand{\APACrefatitle}[2]{#1}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@article{name,
  title  = {This Is an {English} Title},
  langid = {english},
}
@article{name2,
  title  = {Ein deutscher Testtitel},
  langid = {ngerman},
}
\end{filecontents}
\begin{document}
Random citation \cite{name} embeddeed in text.
Random citation \cite{name2} embeddeed in text.
\bibliography{\jobname}
\bibliographystyle{apacite}
\end{document}

So if you need per-entry capitalisation protection for apacite, your best bet is probably the otherwise definitely not recommended practice of protecting the entire title with a pair of curly braces. See more at BibTeX loses capitals when creating .bbl file.

---

biblatex would support a per-entry switch out of the box with the langid field (and there is an APA style for biblatex: biblatex-apa for 7th edition APA style and biblatex-apa6 for 6th edition APA style).

\documentclass[american]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[backend=biber, style=apa]{biblatex}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@article{name,
  title  = {This Is an {English} Title},
  langid = {english},
}
@article{name2,
  title  = {Ein deutscher Testtitel},
  langid = {ngerman},
}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}
\begin{document}
Lorem \autocite{sigfridsson,name,name2}
\printbibliography
\end{document}