: What quotation marks to use if quoting other language? I am writing a thesis in the Swedish language, where convention for quotations is to use right quotes or guillemets: " " or » » But

@Miguel516

You could check what are the rules for nested quotes (or 2nd and 3rd degree quotes) in Swedish language. For example in Poland we use German, then English marks. If you have third degree we use British apostrophe mark 'like this'

The only reason for leaving the original quotation marks is if you don't translate the quote so the whole block should reflect it "as it is" so with mistakes, errors and punctuation.

There is also possibility to use cursive, so you could write
"The Church has always emphasized the public character of its own liturgy."

Here is a link and an explanation depts.washington.edu/engl/askbetty/changing_quotations.php it is in English and as you can see they kept the single quotation marks in the 2nd level quotes.

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@Jessie844

The question may become relevant if yo have quotes within quotes, such as


In a recent post, trrndttr wrote “Diese Bewegung von ,,unten" nach ,,oben" ist weiterhin deutlich spürbar.”


The reason why I'd use German rules for the inner quotes is that all rules for the inner language apply there (e.g., no comma in "A, B und C" even if you'd have "A, B, and C" in English; or if there is Spanish involved, there might even be "unknown" characters such as the inverted question mark). And if it is actually a quotation, of course quotation rules apply, i.e., do not change the quote from its original.
Nevertheless, I'd suggest single quotes in that case for the inner quotes (as is the custom for quotes-in-quotes in German. (Though admittedly, folowing this rule completely may produce weird combinations, e.g., with a British English text having an American English quote having a whatever inner quote (IIRC, BE uses single then double quotes, whereas AE uses double than single quotes).

But nothing of these arguments concernsthe "outer" quote, which should clearly (IMHO) follow the rules of the "outer" language.

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@Caterina889

Quotes are punctuation.

Punctuation should always match the language of the reader. Or the primary language of the piece.

You would not use the Spanish exclamation settings in a German written piece.


If the piece is written in English, with a few quoted Swedish phrases, use English quote marks.
If the piece is written in Swedish, with a few quoted English phrases, use Swedish quotes.


Using foreign quote marks in a piece may look more interesting, they will however confuse the reader in most cases.

Perdue actually has guidelines for their thesis writings which support this viewpoint:


Keeping the whole sentence untranslated is a strategy that you could use when you are expecting your readers to know the language to some degree, or if you decide that the readers would benefit from reading and appreciating the original text. This is also the case, when the sentence might not be recognizable as an English translation, but is very well known in the original version.


Wisława Szymborska once wrote, “Tyle o sobie wiemy, na ile nas sprawdzono.” („We know ourselves only as far as we’ve been tested.”; 7)


Some texts that you are using might already contain specific formatting in a non-English language. In the example below, part of the quotation was written in italics. Preserve that original formatting in your quotation.


Gloria Anzaldúa switches between two languages when she talks about her childhood: “En boca cerrada no entran moscas. ‘Flies don’t enter a closed mouth’ is a saying I kept hearing when I was a child.” (2947)

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