Q. The author enclosed the translation of a name in both quotation marks and parentheses. I removed the quotation marks and left just the parentheses. Are both types of punctuation needed? What is the best way to handle this? Example: The Foreign Name (“translated name”) blah blah . . .
A. If the name is a proper name (an organization, a building, a place), you don’t need quotation marks: Il Popolo della Libertà (The People of Freedom); la mer Rouge (the Red Sea). If the word is a term or concept, you can quote or not, as you please: lavoro (“work”), or lavoro (work); CMOS 11.12 favors parentheses without quotation marks.