How to specify Russian (foreign) authors in the bibliography of an article in English?

The purpose of a bibliographic reference, from your reader's standpoint, is to be able to find the original work. So, if I have any hope of finding it, you must provide the original title, as it appears on the publication.

Now, since I don't speak Russian (and unless your paper is on Russian literature, most of your expected audience won't either), your reference is, for me, just a bunch of weird symbols. So, I will benefit if you provide a translation of the title and authors. That would, at least, give me the topic of the article, and if the authors have any international projection, I'll get a rough idea of their work. The different citation styles dictate how to exactly refer to the original and translated title. This is an example for APA style:

Piaget, J. (1966). La psychologie de l’enfant [The psychology of the child]. Paris, France: Presses Universitaires de France.

In your case, you would also transcribe the name of the author, and possibly translate the name of the journal, so I know what kind of work is it (it wouldn't be the same a paper published in a Psychology journal than in a pure Maths one).

Note that sometimes, work is published in national venues, and later translated into English. Having the names of the authors and translated title can help me find it, if it were published after your paper.


The IEEE Editorial Style Manual contains the following example (Sec. V, p. 35):

[9] E. P. Wigner, “On a modification of the Rayleigh–Schrodinger perturbation theory,” (in German), Math. Naturwiss. Anz. Ungar. Akad. Wiss., vol. 53, p. 475, 1935.

Though they do not give an explicit recommendation, the example above suggests a translation of the title with an indication of the original language.

It should be noted, however, that many authors leave the title in the original language.