[OS X TeX] LaTeX in Languages Other Than English

[Jonathan Dann]

On 4 Mar 2008, at 23:00, David Derbes wrote:

>
> 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
>>
>

Thank you to you both for your replies, I truly appreciate your time  
and effort.

Jonathan