Package babel Error: Unknown option `francais'

Question

I recently updated my operating system from Ubuntu 13.04 to Ubuntu 13.10.

Since then, I am facing difficulties compiling my TeX code in which the french babel package is called. Please note that all my sources were compiling very fine before the system upgrade.

However, now, given the following header:

  \usepackage[francais]{babel}

I receive the following error:

! Package babel Error: Unknown option `francais'. Either you misspelled it

What should I do? Please note that if I remove this part of code (\usepackage[francais]{babel}), everything is compiling well. I also tried it with french, and I receive the same result.

Thank you in advance for your help.

---

MINIMUM WORKING EXAMPLE :

\documentclass[11pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[francais]{babel}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{amsfonts}
\usepackage{amssymb}

\begin{document}
This is a MINIMUM WORKING EXAMPLE.
\end{document}

! Package babel Error: Unknow option `francais'. Either you misspelled it

Answer 1

The complete error message is:

! Package babel Error: Unknown option `francais'. Either you misspelled it
(babel)                or the language definition file francais.ldf was not found.

Package file babel.sty supports francais since a very long time, thus the second line of the error message applies very likely:

The organization of the babel language files has recently changed. The language files (.ldf, ...) go into separate TeX distribution packages. For example, option francais loads frenchb.ldf:

• TeX Live puts the latter in the distribution package babel-french. It needs to be installed, if you are using tlmgr, the package manager of TeX Live.

• In Ubuntu saucy there is a package texlive-lang-french that contains frenchb.ldf (file list). Install it, if you are using TeX Live of Ubuntu.

Answer 2

I had the same error while trying to generate the pdf files from lyx. I did run sudo apt-get install texlive-lang-french and the error was resolved. Now working fine

Update: These packages have become obsolete; texlive-lang-european should be installed now:

sudo apt-get install texlive-lang-european

Answer 3

Exactly same issue here for various languages like: \usepackage[dutch]{babel}

A way of solving: Open: Ubuntu Software Center and install: texlive-lang-all

But what still changed is that in case you change the language in the \usepackage[english]{babel} you have to remove the temporary latex files before latex-ing again. But with that remark every works again as before.

Answer 4

The solution for the error prompted for \usepackage[spanish]{babel} :

! Package babel Error: Unknown option `spanish'. Either you misspelled it

Install the texlive-babel-spanish package via yum/dnf:

sudo dnf install texlive-babel-spanish

Answer 5

I had the same problem for the Spanish language, only after reading I came to the conclusion that I had to install all the packages, and so I did for Elementary OS from the terminal:

$ sudo apt-get install texlive-full texmaker

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Yo tuve el mismo problema para el lenguaje español, unicamente luego de leer llegué a la conclusión que debía instalar todos los paquetes, y así hice para Elementary OS desde la terminal:

$ sudo apt-get install texlive-full texmaker

Answer 6

I found this post looking for the spanish version of this error, i.e.:

Package babel Error: Unknown option `spanish'.

To solve do:

sudo apt-get install texlive-lang-spanish

(Works on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS)

Answer 7

I was looking for an answer here (duplicate question). For me on different Ubuntu derivates, this did the trick:

sudo apt-get install texlive-lang-german

(don't forget the install as in egreg's comment there, where I have this from)

For Fedora/Debian please use

sudo dnf install texlive-babel-german

Of course, you can replace german with your needed language, dutch, spanish or francais, as in the other answers.

Apparently (as stated in this answer), these packages have become obsolete; texlive-lang-european should be installed now:

sudo apt-get install texlive-lang-european