Writing Cantonese with XeLaTeX
Author
LO, Chi-kiu (Jackie) 羅致翹
Last Updated
2 years ago
License
Creative Commons CC BY 4.0
Abstract
An example demonstrates how to write Cantonese characters in document with XeLaTeX on Overleaf.
An example demonstrates how to write Cantonese characters in document with XeLaTeX on Overleaf.
\documentclass[11pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{natbib}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{times}
\usepackage{xeCJK}
\setCJKmainfont{FandolSong}
\setCJKsansfont{AR PL UMing HK}
\setCJKmonofont{AR PL UKai HK}
\hypersetup{
colorlinks=true,
linkcolor=blue,
urlcolor=blue,
}
\title{Writing Cantonese with XeLaTeX on Overleaf}
\author{LO, Chi-kiu (Jackie) {\tt 羅致翹}\\ Multilingual Text Processing \\ Digital Technologies Research Center \\National Research Council Canada (NRC-CNRC) \\ 1200 Montreal Road, Ottawa, ON K1A 0R6, Canada\\ {\tt chikiu.lo@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca } }
\date{June 2020}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
This article demonstrates how to write Cantonese characters in documents using XeLaTeX on Overleaf.
\section{Introduction}
The Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set (latest version HKSCS-2016 \citep{HKSCS2016}) is a set of specific Cantonese characters that is not included in common traditional Chinese character set for various reasons \citep{LuCheungXiongYuXu2014}. Without appropriate settings in the LaTeX document, these Cantonese characters may not be rendered properly. In this article, we show a working example on writing these characters with XeLaTex on Overleaf.
\section{XeLaTeX and xeCJK}
To setup an Overleaf project for Chinese document using xeCJK with XeLaTeX, we follow the example in \url{https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Chinese}. Essentially, it includes the following two steps:
\begin{enumerate}
\item Click on ``Menu'' at the top left corner and choose ``XeLaTeX'' as compiler in settings.
\item Add ``{\tt \textbackslash usepackage\{xeCJK\}}'' at the beginning of the document source.
\end{enumerate}
\section{Fonts}
The default xeCJK font on Overleaf is \emph{FandolSong}, which covers both Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese glyphs but not the characters in HKSCS-2016. For example, using \emph{FandolSong} as the CJK font, the second, fourth and the fifth character of 【石硤尾邨嘅居民】 cannot be rendered.
\citet{Lim2020} listed all the OTF/TTF fonts installed on Overleaf that can be used with fontspec in XeLaTeX. A general principle for selecting font when writing Cantonese is to use fonts specified with "HK" locality, such as \emph{AR PL UMing HK} and \emph{AR PL UKai HK}. As we can see below, using the two mentioned fonts, all the characters in previous example can be rendered properly.
\begin{itemize}
\item[] \emph{AR PL UMing HK}: {\sf【石硤尾邨嘅居民】}
\item[] \emph{AR PL UKai HK}:{\tt【石硤尾邨嘅居民】}
\end{itemize}
To use the selected font, add ``{\tt \textbackslash setCJKmainfont\{<fontname>\}}'' at the beginning of the document source.
\bibliography{reference}
\bibliographystyle{acl_natbib}
\end{document}