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I'm writing a document with and abstract and I've set the language to Spanish, and so the abstract environment displays the word "Resumen" instead of "Abstract". I want the opposite. I've tried

\renewcommand{\abstractname}{Abstract}

And

\renewcommand{\abstract}{Abstract}

The first does nothing and the second displays the word Abstract but removes the bold font, puts it in the beginning of the line and the abstract text displays just after it, something like:

Abstract. This is the abstract...

How should I properly change it? The class document is article

Thanks in advance

lockstep
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MyUserIsThis
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    Welcome to TeX.SX! This depends on the document class. Please help us to help you and add a minimal working example (MWE) that illustrates your problem. It will be much easier for us to reproduce your situation and find out what the issue is when we see compilable code, starting with \documentclass{...} and ending with \end{document}. –  Apr 24 '15 at 06:26
  • \renewcommand{\abstract}{Abstract} is of course wrong, since you have changed the \abstract command (or environment) completely –  Apr 24 '15 at 06:29
  • Is the abstract in english or spanish? – Johannes_B Apr 24 '15 at 08:44
  • @Johannes_B Spanish, but the word Abstract is always used. This is for a project and I believe leaving the spanish word would be better just for consistency, but I have to use Abstract. – MyUserIsThis Apr 24 '15 at 09:30
  • @Sverre The OP says that \renewcommand\abstractname{...} doesn't work the expected way. How is it a duplicate then? – yo' Apr 24 '15 at 11:28
  • @MyUserIsThis Please follow what Christian Hupfer requests and add a Minimal Working Example ("working" here means "can be compiled and shows the formatting error you deal with"). – yo' Apr 24 '15 at 11:29
  • @Sverre It's not a duplicate, I already saw that question and clearly state that renewcommand was not working... – MyUserIsThis Apr 24 '15 at 15:40

3 Answers3

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Change the name of the abstract after \begin{document}.

\documentclass[spanish]{article}
\usepackage{babel}
\begin{document}
\renewcommand{\abstractname}{myuseristhis}
\begin{abstract}este es un buen pato
\end{abstract}
\end{document}

Important thing is, not changing the language to english just to get the abstract name right, as hyphenation pattern for english and spanish are different.

Johannes_B
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  • If you need to do this in the preamble (for instance if you want to include it to a separate class file), you can include \AtBeginDocument{\renewcommand{\abstractname}{myuseristhis}} to the preamble. The \AtBeginDocument{} hook will take care of executing the code inside the document environment. – Eerik Sven Puudist Aug 10 '20 at 11:39
9

This is a guess of a working document, since there is no information on the document class so far.

Use the \selectlanguage{english} feature of babel for the abstract and change later on to spanish.

I assumed article as underlying class.

I've added some unneeded commands to show the language change.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[english,spanish]{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext}

\begin{document}
\selectlanguage{english}

\begin{abstract}
\blindtext
\end{abstract}
\tableofcontents


\selectlanguage{spanish}

\section{\contentsname}

\end{document}

enter image description here

Here is scrartcl version (with some 'improvements')

\documentclass[abstract]{scrartcl}

\usepackage[english,spanish]{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext}

\usepackage{xpatch}
\xpretocmd{\abstract}{\selectlanguage{english}}{}{}  % Switch automatically to english
\xapptocmd{\endabstract}{\selectlanguage{spanish}}{}{} % Switch back at end of {abstract}

\begin{document}

\begin{abstract}
\blindtext
\end{abstract}
\tableofcontents



\section{\contentsname}

\end{document}
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    The class was article. And that solved my problem. I didn't know of the existence of \selectlanguage. Thank you very much for your help. – MyUserIsThis Apr 24 '15 at 07:40
  • @MyUserIsThis: Alright. Thanks for accepting, but please, please, provide more information next time ;-) –  Apr 24 '15 at 07:43
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    I'll do in the future. I always use the article class so I thought these solutions were more or less universal. Thank you again. – MyUserIsThis Apr 24 '15 at 07:47
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    I'd recommend setting the abstract environment inside an otherlanguage environment: \begin{otherlanguage}{english}\begin{abstract} ... \end{abstract}\end{otherlanguage} (freely add line breaks), rather than using \selectlanguage. – egreg Apr 24 '15 at 08:53
  • If your using KOMA, the even better solution would be: \renewcaptionname{spanish}\abstractname{Abstract} – Cube707 Jan 10 '24 at 15:08
4

Your first command has of course changed it but to the same title!

Check with this, you will see the difference 

 \renewcommand{\abstractname}{Resumen}
Ambika Vanchinathan
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