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<h3 class="section">15.1 <code>@documentlanguage <var>ll</var>[_<var>cc</var>]</code>: Set the Document Language</h3>

The <code>@documentlanguage</code> command declares the current document
locale. Write it on a line by itself, near the beginning of the file.

<div class="example">
<pre class="example">@documentlanguage <var>ll</var>[_<var>cc</var>]
</pre></div>

Include a two-letter ISO&nbsp;639-2 language code (<var>ll</var>) following
the command name, optionally followed by an underscore and two-letter
ISO&nbsp;3166 two-letter country code (<var>cc</var>). If you have a
multilingual document, the intent is to be able to use this command
multiple times, to declare each language change. If the command is
not used at all, the default is <code>en_US</code> for US English.

As with GNU Gettext (see <cite><a href="../gettext/index.html#Top">Gettext</a></cite>), if the country
code is omitted, the main dialect is assumed where possible. For
example, <code>de</code> is equivalent to <code>de_DE</code> (German as spoken in
Germany).


For Info and other online output, this command changes the translation
of various document strings such as &ldquo;see&rdquo; in cross-references
(see <a href="Cross-References.html">Cross References</a>), &ldquo;Function&rdquo; in defuns (see <a href="Definition-Commands.html">Definition Commands</a>), and so on. Some strings, such as &ldquo;Node:&rdquo;, &ldquo;Next:&rdquo;,
&ldquo;Menu:&rdquo;, etc., are keywords in Info output, so are not translated
there; they are translated in other output formats.


For TeX, this command causes a file <samp>txi-<var>locale</var>.tex</samp> to
be read (if it exists). If <code>@documentlanguage</code> argument
contains the optional &lsquo;<samp>_<var>cc</var></samp>&rsquo; suffix, this is tried first.
For example, with <code>@documentlanguage de_DE</code>, TeX first looks
for <samp>txi-de_DE.tex</samp>, then <samp>txi-de.tex</samp>.

Such a <samp>txi-*</samp> file is intended to redefine the various English
words used in TeX output, such as &lsquo;Chapter&rsquo;, &lsquo;See&rsquo;, and so on. We
are aware that individual words like these cannot always be translated
in isolation, and that a very different strategy would be required for
ideographic (among other) scripts. Help in improving Texinfo&rsquo;s
language support is welcome.


<code>@documentlanguage</code> also changes TeX&rsquo;s current hyphenation
patterns, if the TeX program being run has the necessary support
included. This will generally not be the case for <code>tex</code>
itself, but will usually be the case for up-to-date distributions of
the extended TeX programs <code>etex</code> (DVI output) and
<code>pdftex</code> (PDF output). <code>texi2dvi</code> will use the
extended TeXs if they are available (see <a href="Format-with-texi2dvi.html">Format with <code>texi2dvi</code></a>).

In September 2006, the W3C Internationalization Activity released a
new recommendation for specifying languages:
<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/bcp/bcp47.txt">http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/bcp/bcp47.txt</a>. When Gettext
supports this new scheme, Texinfo will too.





Since the lists of language codes and country codes are updated
relatively frequently, we don&rsquo;t attempt to list them here. The valid
language codes are on the official home page for ISO&nbsp;639,
<a href="http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/">http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/</a>. The country codes and
the official web site for ISO&nbsp;3166 can be found via
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166</a>.

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Next: <a href="_0040documentencoding.html" accesskey="n" rel="next"><code>@documentencoding</code></a>, Up: <a href="Internationalization.html" accesskey="u" rel="up">Internationalization</a> &nbsp; [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="Command-and-Variable-Index.html" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]
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