texinfo: @documentlanguage

Internationalization

@documentencoding

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17.1 '@documentlanguage LL[_CC]': Set the Document Language
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The '@documentlanguage' command declares the current document locale.
Write it on a line by itself, near the beginning of the file, but after
'@setfilename' (Note: @setfilename):

     @documentlanguage LL[_CC]

  Include a two-letter ISO 639-2 language code (LL) following the
command name, optionally followed by an underscore and two-letter
ISO 3166 two-letter country code (CC).  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 'en_US' for US English.

  As with GNU Gettext (Note: (gettext)Top), if the country code is
omitted, the main dialect is assumed where possible.  For example, 'de'
is equivalent to 'de_DE' (German as spoken in Germany).

  For Info and other online output, this command changes the translation
of various "document strings" such as "see" in cross references (Note:
Cross References), "Function' in defuns (Note: Definition Commands),
and so on.  Some strings, such as "Node:", "Next:", "Menu:", 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 'txi-LOCALE.tex' to be read (if it
exists).  If '@documentlanguage' argument contains the optional '_CC'
suffix, this is tried first.  For example, with '@documentlanguage
de_DE', TeX first looks for 'txi-de_DE.tex', then 'txi-de.tex'.

  Such a 'txi-*' file is intended to redefine the various English words
used in TeX output, such as 'Chapter', 'See', 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's language
support is welcome.

  '@documentlanguage' also changes TeX's current hyphenation patterns,
if the TeX program being run has the necessary support included.  This
will generally not be the case for 'tex' itself, but will often be the
case for recent distributions of extended TeX programs 'etex' (DVI
output) and 'pdftex' (PDF output), such as TeX Live 2008.  'texi2dvi'
will use the extended TeXs if they are available (Note: Format with
texi2dvi).

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

  Since the lists of language codes and country codes are updated
relatively frequently, we don't attempt to list them here.  The valid
language codes are on the official home page for ISO 639,
<http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/>.  The country codes and the
official web site for ISO 3166 can be found via
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166>.