English words hyphenation in Russian text

Question

I have multi-lingual TeX document mostly in Russian but I also include some terms in English in brackets too to make the reader familiar with international terminology. For example the phrase

Два неотъемлемых свойства языка программирования - синтаксис (syntax) и семантика (semantics).

which simply means

Two attributes of a programming language are its syntax and semantics.

looks like

Два неотъемлемых свойства языка программирования --- \textit{синтаксис} (\textit{\selectlanguage{english}syntax\selectlanguage{russian}}) и \textit{семантика} (\textit{\selectlanguage{english}semantics\selectlanguage{russian}}).

Also I have \usepackage[english,russian]{babel}.

The code looks too verbose because I need to use \selectlanguage twice on each English word to make hyphenation work. Without this I get a couple of

Overfull \hbox ...

messages because TeX is not able to hyphen English words when they appear at the ends of the lines.

Is there any better solution?

---

In response to Alexey Malistov.

MacTeX distribution has a couple of language.dat files

• /usr/local/texlive/2009/texmf-dist/source/generic/babel
• /usr/local/texlive/2009/texmf-dist/doc/generic/babel
• /usr/local/texlive/2009/texmf/tex/generic/config
• /usr/local/texlive/2009/texmf-var/tex/generic/config
• /usr/local/texlive/2009/texmf-dist/tex/lambda/config

I'm not sure which one should I edit. Probably one of the first two. They are identical

% File    : language.dat
% Purpose : specify which hypenation patterns to load 
%           while running iniTeX 
=USenglish
american ushyphen.tex
=english
UKenglish  ukhyphen.tex
=british
french   frhyphen.tex
dutch    nehyph2.tex
german   dehypht.tex 
ngerman  dehyphn.tex 

But which one?

Also there is no initexmf command. Googling around I found out that analogue is updmap-sys. But I'm not sure... I'm afraid to spoil my TeX installation. Please, give me the right direction.

Answer 1

Rather than using \selectlanguage{} twice because is a switch, you can use either the otherlanguage environment, or the \foreighlanguage macro:

\begin{otherlanguage}{english}
   Hello world
\end{otherlanguage}

Or, for inline changes like in your example:

Два неотъемлемых свойства языка программирования --- \emph{синтаксис}
(\foreignlanguage{english}{\emph{syntax}}) и \emph{семантика}
(\foreignlanguage{english}{\emph{semantics}}).

In fact, if you often give the english terms, you can define a macro:

\newcommand{\englishterm}[1]{%
    \foreignlanguage{english}{\emph{#1}}}

Answer 2

You should combine english and russian hyphens. Change the file language.dat, adding the following:

ruseng ruenhyph
=russian
=english

And recompile all format files:

initexmf --dump

Add

I use MikTeX. I do not know what you have to do exactly. I would try and experiment.

1. You should add "new language ruseng" which contains english and russian hypens. Then no \setlanguage macro is needed. It works for me very well. I use russian and english words and do not use \setlanguage.

2. You should recompile your formats file. MikTeX provides initexmf command. I am sure there is similiar command for your MacTeX.

Answer 3

You can add discretionary hyphens (\-) on every english word as appropriate.

Alternatively, you can define your own environment that handles both the textit and the language selection.

Answer 4

I believe that \selectlanguage should follow the usual scope rules, so that you can enclose the part you want to be english in braces, which delimit a local scope:

Два неотъемлемых свойства языка программирования --- \textit{синтаксис} 
({\textit{\selectlanguage{english}syntax}}) и \textit{семантика}
({\textit{\selectlanguage{english}semantics}}).

I can't test this right now, though, so if you find that it doesn't work, I would be glad if you informed me of the fact, so that I can modify or delete this answer.