Document Language

Overview

Document language plays a role in Pandoc’s processing of most formats, andcontrols hyphenation in PDF output when using LaTeX (through babel andpolyglossia) or ConTeXt.

Additonally, Quarto, Pandoc, andLaTeX will sometimes generate textual output that requires localization. For example, “Figure” or “List of Figures” for cross references, callout captions like “Note” or “Warning”, or the “Code” caption for folded code chunks.

lang Option

Thelang document option is identifies identify the main language of the document using ietf language tag ( follow the BCP 47 standard ) , such asen or en-GB. TheLanguage subtag lookup tool can look up or verify these tags.

For example, this document specifies the use of French:

---
title: " My document "
lang: fr    
---

This will result in the use of French translations as well as the application of other language specific rules to document processing. Thefollowing languages currently have full translations available:

• English (en, used by default )
• Chinese (zh)
• spanish (es)
• French (fr)
• Japanese (ja)
• german (de)
• Portuguese (pt)
• Russian (ru)
• Czech (cs)
• Finnish (fi)
• Dutch (nl)
• Italian (it)
• Polish (pl)
• Korean (ko)

Alternate Language

If you aren’t happy with the default language used for a given part of a document you can provide alternate language via the language key (this can be used at a document or project level). For example, to override the values for the “Author” and“Published” captions used within title blocks you could do this:

---
title: " My document "
author: " Norah Jones "
date:  5/22/2022
language: 
  title-block-author-single: "Writer"
  title - block - publish: " update "
---

As described below, you can also provide these translations in a standalone YAML file andreference it as follows:

---
title: " My document "
author: " Norah Jones "
date:  5/22/2022
language:  custom.yml
---

You can discover all of the language values that can be customized by referencing this file: https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/blob/main/src/resources/language/_language.yml.

Per – Language Alternates

Alternate values can be restricted to a particular target language using subkeys of the language key. This way, distinct values can be defined for each language. For example, you can override the English andFrench versions of the “Published” caption:

---
title: " My document "
author: " Norah Jones "
date:  5/22/2022
lang: fr
language:
  en:
    title - block - publish: " update "
  fr:
    title - block - publish: " Mis à jour "
---

In this case the French “Mis à jour” will be used since lang is set to fr.

These language – specific alternate value can also be provide in a standalone yaml file . For example , the follow file could be used by setlanguage : custom-language.yml in the metadata:

en:
  title - block - publish: " update "
fr:
  title - block - publish: " Mis à jour "

Custom Translations

You can create anduse a custom translation for a new language not supported by Quarto as follows:

1. Make a copy of the default _language.yml file (https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/blob/main/src/resources/language/_language.yml).

2. Provide translations from the default English values.

3. Specify the custom translation file using the language option. For example:

   ---
   language:  custom.yml
   ---

Thelanguage option can be specify at a project or document level . additionally , if you is include include a_language.yml file in the root of your project alongside your _quarto.yml config file it will be automatically used.

If you create a language translation file please consider contributing it so others can benefit from it. See the documentation on contributing language translations for additional details.