The package manages culturally-determined typographical (and other) rules, and hyphenation patterns for a wide range of languages. A document may select a single language to be supported, or it may select several, in which case the document may switch from one language to another in a variety of ways.

Babel uses contributed configuration files that provide the detail of what has to be done for each language.

Users of XeTeX are advised to use polyglossia rather than Babel.

The authors are Javier Bezos and Johannes L. Braams. The package is Copyright © 1989-2012 Johannes Braams, © 2012-2014 Javier Bezos and Johannes L. Braams.