In a Japanese Wikipedia article, you’ll often see the topic’s English translation right next to it. For very common topics such as [Geography](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%9C%B0%E7%90%86%E5%AD%A6), for example, you can even have multiple languages. This is true for the Wikipedias in [Chinese](https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%9C%B0%E7%90%86%E5%AD%A6) and [Korean](https://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/%EC%A7%80%EB%A6%AC%ED%95%99) as well, by the way. I could be wrong, but I’ve only seen this happening with Western languages, too. Again, of course, when translations are available, it’s mainly only English.
I think it’s really helpful for readers interested in the topic and I wish more Wikis would do this, so it picked my interest. Does this practice of annexing a topic’s foreign translation manifest itself in other media too, like academic books, dictionaries, newspapers etc.? Where did it come from—is it recent, like an Internet thing, or is it common to find, say, the Chinese (or Middle Chinese etc.) translation of a topic in old Japanese texts? Thanks in advance!