[Tex/LaTex] Typesetting any language, Vietnamese for example

languages

I have this document which contains Vietnamese characters, and it doesn't compile correctly:

\documentclass[letterpaper]{article}
\usepackage[vietnam]{babel}
\begin{document}
        Ðàn con chung một trái tim
\end{document}

The characters come out as gobbledygook. I don't know how to give Latex the ability to display characters in any language. It's rather frustrating because I'm used to just typing anything I want in UTF-8.

What are the steps to enabling a language in a Latex document? For the answer, you can use my Vietnamese example.

Best Answer

I copied the start of the Hanoi entry in the vietnamese Wikipedia:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[vietnam]{babel}

\begin{document}

Hà Nội là thủ đô, đồng thời là thành phố đứng đầu Việt Nam về diện
tích tự nhiên và đứng thứ hai về diện tích đô thị sau thành phố Hồ Chí
Minh, nó cũng đứng thứ hai về dân số với 6.913.161 người.

\end{document}

The trick is to enable the utf8 encoding for the package inputenc.

Note The proper Unicode character for the capital "đê" (or "đờ") character is Đ (U+0110 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER D WITH STROKE) and not the one you're using, that is Ð (U+00D0 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER ETH). They are pretty similar, but distinct. The former is used in Croatian and Vietnamese, the latter in Icelandic (and its lowercase form is ð).

enter image description here

In case different languages must be used, they should be declared to babel:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[english,vietnam]{babel}

\begin{document}

Hà Nội là thủ đô, đồng thời là thành phố đứng đầu Việt Nam về diện
tích tự nhiên và đứng thứ hai về diện tích đô thị sau thành phố Hồ Chí
Minh, nó cũng đứng thứ hai về dân số với 6.913.161 người.

\begin{otherlanguage*}{english}
Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam and the country's second largest city.
Its population in 2009 was estimated at 2.6 million for urban
districts, 6.5 million for the metropolitan jurisdiction.
\end{otherlanguage*}

\end{document}

For short inserts in English, \foreignlanguage{english}{some text in English} can be used. One can also define a personal abbreviation, such as

\newcommand{\EN}{\foreignlanguage{english}}

so to be allowed to write \EN{some text in english}. You can also abbreviate the environment form with

\newenvironment{english}
  {\begin{otherlanguage}{english}}
  {\end{otherlanguage}}
\newenvironment{english*}
  {\begin{otherlanguage*}{english}}
  {\end{otherlanguage*}}

See the babel manual for the difference between otherlanguage and otherlanguage*.

Alternatively, you can use XeLaTeX:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont[Ligatures=TeX]{Linux Libertine O}
\usepackage{polyglossia}
\setmainlanguage{vietnamese}

\begin{document}

Hà Nội là thủ đô, đồng thời là thành phố đứng đầu Việt Nam về diện
tích tự nhiên và đứng thứ hai về diện tích đô thị sau thành phố Hồ Chí
Minh, nó cũng đứng thứ hai về dân số với 6.913.161 người.

\end{document}

which gives a correct result:

enter image description here

Polyglossia issues a warning about missing hyphenation patterns for Vietnamese, which should not be a problem.

For declaring other languages to Polyglossia, one should use, for instance,

\setotherlanguage{english}

Note that the same commands as in babel can be used with Polyglossia, but in this case the english environment would already be defined, so only english* might need to be.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] newcommand for foreign language

The main problem is that you're not telling TeX what to typeset in the cyrillic script: your definition ends up in discarding the argument and typesetting nothing in Russian.

You need

\newcommand{\rl}[1]{\foreignlanguage{russian}{#1}}

where #1 stands for the contents of the argument following \rl when called.

Since TeX is a macro expansion language, also

\newcommand{\rl}{\foreignlanguage{russian}}

would work, because when TeX sees \rl{Russkii0 yazyk}, it would replace \rl with \foreignlanguage{russian}. But probably the first way is easier to understand.

However, if you plan to use the default Computer Modern font, you'd better make a change to how \cyrillictext (the internal macro called when switching to Russian) works. The problem is that the cmr font family in the encoding OT2 is associated to a font that's only available as bitmap. A very similar font is distributed by AMS also as Type1. The change I propose is thus

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[OT2, T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[russian, english]{babel}

%% Let's patch \cyrillictext so that it uses
%% the Washington University fonts
\usepackage{xpatch}
\xpatchcmd{\cyrillictext}
 {\selectfont}
 {\fontfamily{wncyr}\selectfont}
 {}{}
\let\cyr\cyrillictext

\newcommand{\rl}[1] {\foreignlanguage{russian}{#1}}

\begin{document}

\rl{Russkii0 yazyk}

\end{document}

A comparison of the output should say all. In the first image you see pixelated fonts. The “ka” and the “ya” in the second example are slightly different, but “more Cyrillic” in my opinion.

Output with the default Cyrillic fonts

enter image description here

Output with the Washington University fonts

enter image description here

[Tex/LaTex] Set language only for some sentences

You first of all have to announce babel you want to use Italian in your document, so do

\usepackage[italian,british]{babel}

that still makes British English the default language for the document.

You now have available several possibilities:

\selectlanguage{italian}, which sets Italian as the default language from the point of declaration on, respecting grouping.
\begin{otherlanguage}{italian}...\end{otherlanguage}, that's the same as before, but limits the scope of the language change.
\begin{otherlanguage*}{italian}...\end{otherlanguage*}, much similar to the above, but doesn't change the meaning of tags such as \abstractname or \chaptername.
\foreignlanguage{italian}{frase in italiano} for short inserts.

The main application you have in mind, perhaps, is for the abstract. So you can do (under \frontmatter, in order to have unnumbered chapters that go in the table of contents nonetheless)

\chapter{\abstractname}

The abstract in English.

\begin{otherlanguage}{italian}
\chapter{\abstractname}

Il sunto in italiano.
\end{otherlanguage}

Inside the document otherlanguage* is probably the environment you'll choose.

Some notes about your preamble.

The package ae is obsolete; don't load it.
Also subfigure is deprecated. Its official substitute is subfig, but it's more recommended to load subcaption. Both require syntax changes (check the manuals), but are better and, especially subcaption, more powerful.
Whenever I see a table using \multirow, I always find a better way to make it without the command. But this is personal opinion. `;-)

Here's a polished up version:

\documentclass[12pt,a4paper,titlepage]{book}

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[british]{babel}

\usepackage{subcaption}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{amssymb}
%\usepackage{multirow} % please! ;-)
\usepackage{verbatim}
\usepackage{alltt}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] newcommand for foreign language

Output with the default Cyrillic fonts

Output with the Washington University fonts

[Tex/LaTex] Set language only for some sentences

Related Question