Referencing with Devanagari in biblatex

Question

This is my MWE -

\begin{filecontents}{test.bib}
@BOOK{म्हणी,
TITLE={मराठी भाषेतील असभ्य म्हणी व वाक्प्रचार},
AUTHOR={मराठे, अश्विनीकुमार दत्तात्रेय},
YEAR={2012},
PUBLISHER={ग्रंथाली}
}
\end{filecontents}

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{polyglossia}
\setdefaultlanguage{marathi}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage[backend=biber,style=apa]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{test.bib}
\setmainfont[Script=Devanagari,Mapping=devanagarinumenrals]{Yashomudra} %Replace with any Devanagari font.

\begin{document}
    \lipsum[1-2]
    \cite{म्हणी}
    \printbibliography
\end{document}

This MWE results in some error messages, e.g.:

! Undefined control sequence.
<argument> \datecircaprint \mkbibdateapalongextra
                                                  {labelyear}{labelmonth}{la...
l.19 ^^I\cite{म्हणी}

See the full .log file for further details. What could be the possible reason? How to solve this?

Where do you see an error message? The messages are all marked as INFO. — Ralf Stubner, Dec 03 '19 at 13:05
Probably not in the .blg file, but I have errors in the log. See line 736, 749 of the log file. I pasted blg file just in case it was needed. — Niranjan, Dec 03 '19 at 13:10
that's a biblatex-apa problem. You are missing the language files. — Ulrike Fischer, Dec 03 '19 at 14:09
As Ulrike says, you need an .lbx file for your language, see for example https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/310471/35864 and links. Since APA style is a bit tricky and the definitions needed by biblatex-apa need some work I would urge you to check out whether it would be possible to use one of the standard styles (style=authoryear, for example) instead of the highly specialised and American-centric APA style. — moewe, Dec 04 '19 at 21:22
If you do \DeclareLanguageMapping{marathi}{english-apa} after biblatex, it compiles and you will see why you need to define a marathi-apa.lbx file (see the biblatex-apa folder for files for other languages). When the styles don't provide their own language-specific string definition files, biblatex picks up the babel/polyglossia language setting and so can plug in the relevant string constants that way, like the heading for 'bibliography' (e.g, see the contents of the gloss-marathi.ldf file in the polyglossia folder). Although mapping is available, and inheritance... — Cicada, Dec 08 '19 at 11:53
Also be sure to read the biblatex manual about transliteration support since biblatex supports correct sorting of Devanagari via transliteration. — PLK, Jan 18 '20 at 10:35

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 25 '20 at 10:13

@Niranjan, replacing \printbibliography with \bibliography{test} and \bibliographystyle{apalike} helps. However, notice that the initials written in Devanagari are not properly recognised by the bibtex.

\begin{filecontents}{test.bib}
    @BOOK{म्हणी,
        TITLE={मराठी भाषेतील असभ्य म्हणी व वाक्प्रचार},
        AUTHOR={मराठे, अश्विनीकुमार दत्तात्रेय},
        YEAR={2012},
        PUBLISHER={ग्रंथाली}
    }
\end{filecontents}

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{polyglossia}
\setdefaultlanguage{marathi} 
\usepackage{lipsum}
%\usepackage[backend=biber,style=apa]{biblatex}
%\addbibresource{test.bib}
\setmainfont[Script=Devanagari,Mapping=devanagarinumenrals]{Yashomudra} %Replace with any Devanagari font.

\begin{document}
    \lipsum[1-2]
    \cite{म्हणी}
    %\printbibliography
    \bibliography{test} 
    \bibliographystyle{apalike}
\end{document}

Referencing with Devanagari in biblatex

1 Answers1