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.

Note that the package has contributions for several languages that remain to be incorporated. Examples are:
Arabic;
Magyar (Hungarian);
Serbian written in cyrillic;
Spanish; and
Spanish, using Mexican conventions..

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

The author is Johannes L. Braams. The package is Copyright © 1989-2008 Johannes Braams.