Q. CMOS 11.11 states, “When the title of a work in another language is mentioned in text, an English gloss may follow in parentheses,” and “if the translation has not been published, the English should be capitalized in sentence case . . . and should appear neither in italics nor within quotation marks.” In texts that discuss in detail such a work (say, a literary analysis of a Chinese-language novel for a predominantly English-speaking readership) and where the English gloss is justifiably preferred to the original, should that gloss stay in roman, capitalized sentence-style throughout, or may it carry the features of a published translation (italics or quote marks) for ease of presentation?
A. Yes, in a case like that it makes sense to use italics (or whatever) for the title. You might introduce the style explicitly to ward off the copyeditor—for example: “In the Chinese novel [Chinese characters or transliteration] (hereafter referred to as Plum Tree at Sunset) . . .”