[OS X TeX] LaTeX in Languages Other Than English

[David Derbes]

On Mar 4, 2008, at 1:27 PM, Roussanka Loukanova wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Tue, 4 Mar 2008, Jonathan Dann wrote:
>
>> Hi Guys,
>>
>> I need a bit of information here, when someone writes in LaTeX in  
>> non-Roman scripts, i.e. Japanese, Korean, Arabic, are the commands  
>> like \section still written in Roman, or are they translated, too?   
>> Am I right in understanding that the encodings that many would use  
>> for these languages would be UTF-8?
>
> I have done few tests with Bulgarian and Russian languages, both of  
> which use Cyrillic, but are somehow different, esp with respect to  
> hyphenation. I found several options for encodings for those  
> languages. In all cases,
> the LaTeX commands are the way they are, you do not translate them  
> (as one wouldn't dare to translate programming languages). In order  
> to switch between languages you would use a command like:
>
> \documentclass{article}
> \usepackage[koi8-r]{inputenc}
> \usepackage[bulgarian,english]{babel}
>
> \selectlanguage{bulgarian}
> Bla-bla in cyrillic...
> \selectlanguage{english}
> bla-bla
>
> For Cyrillic, one can type the text in the Latin alphabet (by standard
> phonetic correspondence), in the tex file (with the exceptions of  
> several special letters), but the typeset output will be in Cyrillic  
> letters. For small documents this works nicely, esp if one need to  
> sent out the latex code by email, with no problems due to platforms.

What Roussanka does I do for Russian; I include a snippet:

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage[T2A]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[russian,english]{babel}
\begin{document}

\selectlanguage{english}

\textbf{Verbs of motion}

\hspace*{1.45in}\emph{uni} \hspace*{2.8in}\emph{multi}
\selectlanguage{russian}
\begin{center}
идт\textbf{и}, ход\textbf{и}ть
\selectlanguage{english}
to go by foot, walk, set off (\emph{501 Russian Verbs}, p.\,490)
\selectlanguage{russian}
\end{center}
\vspace*{-0.25in}
\begin{tabbing}
\hspace*{1.2in}\=\hspace*{1in}\=\hspace{30ex}\=\hspace*{1in}\=\kill
\>ид\textbf{у}\>ид\textbf{ё}м \>хож\textbf{у} \>х 
\textbf{o}дим \\
\>ид\textbf{ё}шь\>ид\textbf{ё}те \>х\textbf{o}дишь \>х 
\textbf{o}дите \\
\>ид\textbf{ё}т\>ид\textbf{у}т \>х\textbf{o}дит \>х 
\textbf{o}дят \\
\end{tabbing}
\end{document}

A caveat: you have to save the files as Unicode (UTF-8) (in TeXShop,  
there's a preference.) I got the Cyrillic with the Russian Phonetic  
font from Apple's International font. Command-space toggles the font  
from English to Russian Phonetic.

For Greek, I use a different approach:

\documentclass[11pt]{report}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage[english,greek]{babel}
\languageattribute{greek}{polutoniko}
\usepackage{gfsporson}
\begin{document}
\normalsize
\selectlanguage{greek}
\begin{center}
\textporson{kt~hm'a te  >es a>ie`i  m~allon >`h  >ag'wnisma >es t`o  
paraqr~hma >ako'uein x'ugkeitai}  \\
\end{center}
\selectlanguage{english}
\noindent the work was done not to win the applause of the moment, but  
as a possession for all time.

\hfill Thucydides, \emph{The Peloponnesian War}, I.22.5

\end{document}

Here, the accented Greek is typed in the Roman alphabet.

And, of course, there is the \fontspec package and XeTeX, which is  
probably the easiest and most powerful
approach. But I'll let someone who knows this package a lot better  
tell you.

Good luck!

David Derbes
U of Chicago Lab Schools


>
>
> Emacs has options to switch between alphabets (languages).
>
> For special writing systems, like Japanese and Korean, in latex, and  
> that on Macs, perhaps you can ask the Carbon Emacs people:
> <http://homepage.mac.com/zenitani/emacs-e.html>
>
> The same what they do should work somehow with TeXShop too.
> But may be somebody on this list will give a better guide than me.
>
> Roussanka
>
>
> >
>> Thanks, as always, for any time you give me.
>>
>> Jon
>>
>> Jonathan P Dann: Trainee Medical Physicist - Homepage - Flickr
>> contact | j.p.dann at gmail.com - 07515-352-490 | skype - jonathandann
>>
>>
>
>
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