I'm writing the thesis for my master degree, some of the very very old articles I have to cite are in a foreign language I don't understand (usually German and French). Most of them have been translated in my native language and/or English, but in some cases I didn't find a translation.
Even if I'm asking it for the thesis I think it does apply in more serious cases of research too.
An example would be for example if I write that the Friedman Lemaitre Robertson Walker metric in general relativity was first derived by Lemaitre in 1922. If I cite his original article in French at this point, would I be doing something wrong since I don't understand French and I can't understand what's written there? This is just an example, I'm pretty sure an English version of Lemaitre article exists, I just didn't check.
I mean I assume that when someone cites an article he' read and understood it.
My opinion is that I shouldn't cite the original article at all but cite someone else who cites it, knowing what was written in the original article.
Am I overthinking it and I should just simply cite these articles or is there a better procedure?
I don't know if it can be relevant but these articles appears mainly in the very beginning of the work, which is just an introduction to the topic of the work
