MLA Citations (9th ed.): Contributors

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Aside from an author whose name appears at the start of the entry, other people may be credited in the source as contributors. Key contributors should always be listed in your entry. Other kinds of contributors should be listed on a case-by-case basis in the Contributor element.

Whenever you list a contributor, include a label describing the role played. Precede each name (or group of names) with a description of the role.

You should always include the following contributors in your entry:

• Translators
• Editors responsible for the scholarly editions and anthologies of a primary author's works
• Editors responsible for edited collections of works by various primary authors from which you cite an individual contribution

Other key contributors that should generally be listed in the Contributor element are:

• Film directors
• Music conductors
• Performing groups like dance companies and choirs

Examples:

Beowulf. Translated by Stephen Mitchell, Yale UP, 2017.

Fantastic Mr. Fox. Directed by Wes Anderson, 20th Century Fox, 2009.

Troutman-Robinson, Denise. "Black Women's Language." The Reader's Companion to U.S. Women's History, edited by Wilma Pearl Mankiller, 1st ed., Houghton Mifflin, 1998.

It may be necessary to include other types of contributors if they shaped the overall presentation of the work, if your discussion focuses on their contribution, or if they are important for identifying a version of the work.

Below are common descriptors for contributors:

• adapted by
• directed by
• edited by
• illustrated by
• introduction by
• narrated by
• performance by
• translated by
• created by
• choreographed by
• conducted by
• uploaded by

In some cases, you may need to develop a more specific label or specify a role with a noun or noun phrase surrounded by commas after the name, as for the script translators and general editor in the examples below.

Examples:

Alfredson, Tomas, director. Let The Right One In. Script translated by Paul Fischer and Andres Lokko, Magnet Films, 2009.

Berger, André. "Climate Model Simulations of the Geological Past." The Earth System: Physical and Chemical Dimensions of Global Environmental Change, edited by Michael C. McCracken and John S. Perry, pp. 296-301. Encyclopedia of Global Environmental Change, Ted Munn, general editor, 2nd ed., vol. 1, Wiley, 2002.

You may sometimes have reason to list a key contributor in the Author element. 

For example, you are discussing a translated work and your discussion focuses on the translator's choices, you may place the translator in the Author element (followed by the label translator). If the work has a primary author, place the primary author's name in the Contributor element preceded by the label by.

Example:

Wall, Geoffrey, translator. Madame Bovary. By Gustave Flaubert, Penguin Books, 2003.

Likewise, if you are discussing a collaborative work but focusing on the contributions of a particular key contributor, you may place that contributor in the Author element followed by an appropriate label.

Example:

Johnson, Rian, director. Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Walt Disney Studios, 2017.

If a contributor holds multiple roles, you can mention more than one role in the contributor labels.

Example:

"The Husband's Message." The First Poems in English, edited and translated by Michael Alexander, Penguin Classics, 2008, pp. 65-66.

When a source has three or more contributors in the same role, list the name of the first contributor and follow it with the abbreviation et al.

Example:

Balibar, Étienne. Politics and the Other Scene. Translated by Christine Jones et al., Verso, 2002.

If you are listing more than one contributor in different roles, follow the order of the source or list contributors in order of prominence or importance to the work. But when you are including the author in the Contributor element, always list the author first.

Example:

King, Martha, and Carol Lazzaro-Weis, translators. "The Signorina" and Other Stories. By Anna Banti, edited by Lazzaro-Weis, Modern Language Association of America, 2001.

NOTE: You can shorten names in the Contributor element that have already been given in full in an entry, as seen in the above example.