Q. In an article I am editing, the book title Di kupe appears (kupe is Yiddish for “heap”), and in the text the author will use the Yiddish word kupe instead of heap. I am following CMOS advice to italicize a foreign word if it is not in the dictionary. However, since the word and the title are the same, I am afraid that it might confuse the reader. Should I translate the Yiddish word when it is not used as a title?
A. Since the word will be lowercased as a word, and the title Di kupe includes the uppercased article Di, you can use italics for both and edit for clarity in contexts where there could be confusion. In any case, when a word from another language is used throughout a document, you can always decide to declare it to be familiar enough for roman treatment.