Setting up multilingual Askbot sites

Askbot can support multiple languages on a single site. Urls are modified by a language code prefix, e.g. url /questions/ becomes /de/questions/ for the German localization.

Note

If you want to learn about configuration of individual languages please look here

The setting in the settings.py file controlling language mode is ASKBOT_LANGUAGE_MODE.

For the single-language mode this setting may be removed or set to::

ASKBOT_LANGUAGE_MODE = ‘single-lang’

For the “url language” mode (there are two multilingual modes)::

ASKBOT_LANGUAGE_MODE = ‘url-lang’

For the “user language” mode::

ASKBOT_LANGUAGE_MODE = ‘user-lang’

The “url language” mode displays questions on the main page only for the language corresponding to the url prefix (e.g. /en/ for English or /de/ for German).

The “user language” mode displays questions on the main page in the languages section of their user profile (for the logged in users).

Language of the user interface in both multilingual modes corresponds to the language prefix of the url.

For either of multilingual modes, specify the list of the enabled languages:

from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _
LANGUAGES = (
    ('de', _('German')),
    ('en', _('English'))
)

More on the usage of this setting can be read in the Django documentation.

Once the language mode is specified, Askbot startup checks, if enabled will guide through the configuration of the remaining settings.

Upgrading from older versions

Older versions had setting ASKBOT_MULTILINGUAL used in the project-level urls.py file. When upgrading from such version, update the urls.py according to the template in askbot/setup_templates/urls.py.

Other settings required for the multilingual configuration

If the startup checks are enabled (setting ASKBOT_SELF_TEST does not equal False), Askbot will guide you through configuring of the remaining settings.

This section will help users who disable the Askbot self-tests and when the mode is ‘url-lang’ or ‘user-lang’.

Activate the django’s locale middleware by adding to the MIDDLEWARE the following entry:

'django.middleware.locale.LocaleMiddleware',

Add the following to the settings.py::

ASKBOT_TRANSLATE_URL = False