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Babel

The multilingual framework to localize LaTeX, LuaLaTeX, XeLaTeX

Chinese

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The Chinese language is available for luatex and xetex. With the former, both renderers (Node and Harfbuzz) are fine.

Note the best option is usually to resort to a dedicated framework like CTeX, CJK or ChineseJFM. However, for simple documents in horizontal writing, as well as a few words or sentences in a multilingual document, babel should be enough.

Here is a short example:

\documentclass{book}

\usepackage[chinese, provide=*]{babel}

\babelfont{rm}{FandolSong}

\begin{document}

\chapter{天山山脉}

位于乌鲁木齐市以东的博格达峰海拔5445米,峰上的积雪终年不化,人们称它“雪海”。位于博格达峰山腰的天池,清澈透明,是新疆著名的旅游胜地。目前,博格达峰自然保护区已纳入联合国“人与生物圈”自然保护区网。托木尔峰,海拔7439米,是天山的最高峰,登山界一般承认1956年阿巴拉科夫首次登顶成功,但也有说1938年已有苏联登山队登顶;1975年7月25日首个中国登山队登顶成功。

\end{document}

Line breaking

Rules are harcoded in XeTeX, but in LuaTeX a line breaking mechanism has been devised, based on (but not strictly following) the Unicode algorithm.

Justification in both engines is controlled by a couple of options in \babelprovide.

There is in addition the posibility to change globally the line breaking class, with, for example:

\babelcharproperty{`“}{linebreak}{op}
\babelcharproperty{`”}{linebreak}{cl}

For the meaning of these codes, see the Unicode Standard Annex #14: Line Breaking Properties.

Counters

With luatex there are two ways to map Arabic to Chinese numerals, passed as option to \babelprovide:

To perform this conversión, use the following settings:

\usepackage[chinese, provide=*]{babel}
\babelprovide[mapdigits]{chinese}  % or alternatively maparabic

In addition, the following counters are predefined: