Multilingual class/style file?

Question

I'm writing some templates and class files that need to use some strings of text, say names for theorems, lemmas, etc., and I would like to provide the ability to easily switch the language in which these pieces of text are written; much like Babel does for standard LaTeX document classes.

The question is what would be the preferred way to implement this? Is there a way to make it work nicely together with Babel (e.g. somehow “read” the chosen language in babel options and use this for my own text labels)?

Answer 1

You can provide a switch in your class for language or use it locally if you wish. You can add 'captions' as you wish, using babel's mark-up for the language, for example for Greek:

\addto\captionsgreek{%
  \def\prefacename{Pr'ologos}%
  \def\refname{Anafor'es}%
  \def\abstractname{Per'ilhyh}%
  \def\bibname{Bibliograf'ia}%
  ...
  \def\proofname{Ap'odeixh}%
  \def\glossaryname{Glwss'ari}% 
  }

Answer 2

The translator package might help. It should be part of your TeX installation since it is shipped with the beamer class (which uses it).