Internationalization¶

The goal of internationalization and localization is to allow a single Web application to offer its content in languages and formats tailored to the audience.

Django has full support for translation of text, formatting of dates, times and numbers, and time zones.

Essentially, Django does two things:

It allows developers and template authors to specify which parts of their apps should be translated or formatted for local languages and cultures.
It uses these hooks to localize Web apps for particular users according to their preferences.

To specify which parts (specially string and unicode instances) must be translated to the local language where the web app is being deployed, Django offers the functions located in django.utils.translation.

Standard translation¶

To specify an standard translation, use the ugettext_lazy function:

In a view:

from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _
from django.http import HttpResponse

def some_view(request):
    output = _('Hello World')
    return HttpResponse(output)

In a model:

from django.db import models
from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _

class Object(models.Model):
    REACTIVE = '0'
    MATERIAL = '1'
    EQUIPMENT = '2'
    TYPE_CHOICES = (
        (REACTIVE, _('Reactive')),
        (MATERIAL, _('Material')),
        (EQUIPMENT, _('Equipment'))
    )
    shelf = models.ForeignKey('Shelf')
    type = models.CharField(_('Type'), max_length=2, choices=TYPE_CHOICES)
    code = models.CharField(_('Code'), max_length=255)
    description = models.TextField(_('Description'))
    name = models.CharField(_('Name'), max_length=255)
    feature = models.ManyToManyField('ObjectFeatures')

In a template:

You need to put {% load i18n %} in the begining of the template, always after {% extends 'base.html' %}:

{% load i18n %}
<html>
        <head>
                <title> {% trans "This is the title." %} </title>
        </head>
        <body>
                <h1> {% trans "Hello World!!" %} </h1>
        </body>
</html>

In a template with CSS:

<html>
        <head>
                <title> {% trans "This is the title." %} </title>
                <style>
                        @page {
                                margin: 3cm 2cm; padding-left: 1.5cm;
                                @top-left {
                                        content: "{% trans "Organilab Report" %}";
                                }
                                @top-right {
                                        content: "{% trans "Date:" %} {{ datetime }}";
                                }
                                @bottom-right {
                                        content: "{% trans "Page" %} " counter(page)
                                        " {% trans "of" %} " counter(pages) ;
                                }
                                @bottom-left {
                                        content:  "{% trans "User:" %} {{ request.user }}";
                                        color: red;
                                }
                        }
                        body {
                                text-align: justify
                        }
                </style>
        </head>
        <body>
                <h1> {% trans "Hello World!!" %} </h1>
        </body>
</html>

Then, create a folder with the name of locale in your project (laboratory/locale), and execute the next command:

$ python manage.py makemessages  -l es

-l es : indicates the translation lenguage.

Edit the .po file.