alphalabel in multilanguage bibliography in biblatex with biber and babel

Question

I search and found no similar question. I know XeLatex is a one of the solution, but it seems is doable in Babel also

My setup: Miktex 2.9 with Babel 2015/08/03 3.9m and Biber 2.1 This is MWE

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[russian,greek,english]{babel}
\usepackage[natbib=true,
style=alphabetic,
isbn=true,
url=true,
citestyle=alphabetic,
defernumbers=false,
sorting=nyt, 
bibencoding=utf8,
backend=biber,
language=auto,  
autolang=other,]{biblatex}

\addbibresource{test.bib}
\begin{document}
Example one in Greek \textgreek{\cite{AlKarapan}},
 example two in Russian
  { \otherlanguage{russian}текст на русском \cite{CypinIstorijaRPC}     текст     на русском}   and example  in English again.
\printbibliography
\end{document}

and test.bib is following:

@Book{AlKarapan,
author = {Καραπαναγοπούλου, Αλέξανδρος Κ.},
title = {Η Μεγάλη Σύνοδος της Ορθοδόξου Ανατολικής Εκκλησίας},
publisher = {auto-édition},
year = {\hbox{1990--1998}},
volumes = {6},
address = {Αθήνα},
hyphenation={greek},
langid={greek},
}
@Inbook{CypinIstorijaRPC,
author = {Владислав Цыпин},
title = {История Русской Церкви 1917--1997},
chapter = {VIII},
publisher = {Издательство Спасо-Преображенского Валаамского монастыря},
address = {Москва},
date = {1997},
urldate = {2010-10-25},
url = {http://old.pravoslavie.by/podpod.asp?id=135&Session=10},
langid={russian},
hyphenation={russian},
}

Now if you run pdflatex--biber-pdflatex you see

error is:

Command \textKappa unavailable in encoding OT1. \endentry

and so on...

If you make main language Russian, you will see letters in key for Russian bibentry but not in Greek bibentry.

Solution is following: Open generated bbl file and find labelalpha field entry

  \field{labelalpha}{Καρ98}

and

  \field{labelalpha}{Цып97}

and add there appropriate \otherlanguage command entries as

  \field{labelalpha}{\otherlanguage{greek}Καρ98}

and

  \field{labelalpha}{\otherlanguage{russian}Цып97}

save it and just run pdflatex..Errors are gone and everything is OK..

So question is How can i addd otherlanguage call to labelalpha entries without editing bbl file? can biblatex do this? I thin it is natural since keys are generated by langid so \otherlanguage or in general labelalpha's language needs to be same as langid

p.s. I encountered this problem with, English, Russian,Greek,Georgian setup. No matter which language is set as main language for document...adding 'otherlanguage' call solves the problem..Example was shortened for demo.

edited: just added image how bibliography looks after editing .bbl file adding 'otherlanguage' calls

I think language=auto or similar option needs to applied for keys in bibliography list

Answer 1

The only thing we are missing from language=auto and autolang=other is that they neglect to wrap the label in the bibliography into foreignlanguage or otherlanguage. That is easily fixed with the following definition

\DeclareFieldFormat{labelalpha}{%
  \iffieldundef{langid}
    {#1}
    {\foreignlanguage{\thefield{langid}}{#1}}%
}

This does exactly what you did with your .bbl file, but automatically. Of course, we can only really do that if the langid field is present, so we check that first.

MWE

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents*}{\jobname.bib}
@Book{AlKarapan,
author = {Καραπαναγοπούλου, Αλέξανδρος Κ.},
title = {Η Μεγάλη Σύνοδος της Ορθοδόξου Ανατολικής Εκκλησίας},
publisher = {auto-édition},
date = {1990/1998},
volumes = {6},
address = {Αθήνα},
langid={greek},
}
@Inbook{CypinIstorijaRPC,
author = {Владислав Цыпин},
title = {История Русской Церкви 1917--1997},
chapter = {VIII},
publisher = {Издательство Спасо-Преображенского Валаамского монастыря},
address = {Москва},
date = {1997},
urldate = {2010-10-25},
url = {http://old.pravoslavie.by/podpod.asp?id=135&Session=10},
langid={russian},
}
\end{filecontents*}

\usepackage[russian,greek,english]{babel}
\usepackage[natbib=true,
style=alphabetic,
isbn=true,
url=true,
defernumbers=false,
sorting=nyt, 
backend=biber,
language=auto,  
autolang=other]{biblatex}


\DeclareFieldFormat{labelalpha}{%
  \iffieldundef{langid}
    {#1}
    {\foreignlanguage{\thefield{langid}}{#1}}%
}

\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

\begin{document}
\cite{AlKarapan,CypinIstorijaRPC,aksin}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

gives