How to prepare the translator's environment

This answer assumes that your application source code has already been prepared for the internationalization (askbot is) and explains how to prepare a file holding the translation messages. Ideally this file is the only thing that translator needs to touch in order to do his work.

There are two ways to get started, in either case you will have to type some stuff into the command line of your OS.

Let's assume you are translating to Russian and your operating system is Unix-like.

Start from scratch or update an existing translation

By starting from scratch it is meant that you are not using any prepared localization for another language and instead you are just pulling the string keys from the project source files.

This method also works when source files get out of sync with your translation and you want to update it.

1. open the command shell in the directory that contains your settings.py file
2. type python manage.py makemessages -l ru -e html,py,txt

Note: the above command assumes that your translations are in the django site project directory, which is not always the case. For example, in askbot the localization files are inside the directory askbot, so in such cases the command will be:

cd askbot
python ../manage.py jinja2_makemessages -l ru -e html,py,txt

Notice the ../manage.py. Also, in askbot the message extraction command is customized, so it is called jinja2_makemessages instead of the django's makemessages.

The command above will create/update a file ./locale/ru/LC_MESSAGES/django.po - that file will be the main focus of your translation effort. .po files are meant to be edited by the translators. There are some format requirements to follow, but they are easier than those used in the source code and contain no programming logic.

If you are working on Windows, the command will start with python.exe, but will be the same otherwise. ru - is the language code (locale in computer parlance).

Start from another language translation

This method is perfect if there is a good quality localization that you understand, and is the only sane way if application abbreviates the string keys.

All you need here is just copy the translation directory (say English - ./locale/en) and name it ./locale/ru:

 cd locale
 cp -r en ru #copy the directories recursively
 cd ..       #get back to the root of your django site

What's next?

Now you have the ./locale/ru/LC_MESSAGES/django.po file. All that you need to do now is to translate those hundreds of messages into your language :).

Open the file in your favorite text editor and type away, but you will have to pay attention to some very specific issues - pluralization, insertion of variables and be careful with typing html tags into the translation strings.

Hi,

I'm giving my first steps with python/django/mezzanine so please bear with me.

I modified a translation file and compiled it ok.

The translated file belongs to mezzanine's blog application and the only place I found out I could place it to test was at the blog app's locale folder (~/MY_VIRTUAL_ENV/lib/python2.7/site-packages/mezzanine/blog/locale/es/LC_MESSAGES).

It worked fine, but my guts tell me there has to be a way I can have this file(s) in some other location WITHIN my own mezzanine application so:

1. I can easily maintain it and
2. I don't have to keep my whole virtual environment in my SCM's repository.

Am I in the right track? If so, where should I place my new own translation files?

Thanks a lot in advanced

How to compile translations?

If you have finished translating the content of your .po file - all you need to do is to compile the messages into machine-readable binary form. Run:

cd askbot
python ../manage.py compilemessages

If all goes well - your translation is ready for use, otherwise - fix any errors in the .po file and rerun the command.

Finally, if you have not done it yet - adjust the value of LANGUAGE_CODE variable to 'ru' in the case above.

What you could try is Get Localization and https://github.com/getlocalization/django-getlocalization">django-getlocalization to sync your Django app's .po files with GL easily.

What is internationalization?

Internationalization includes two things (1) preparing of your software to be translated to other languages and (2) creating the translations themselves. Internationalization is long word and is abbreviated as i18n - because there are 18 characters between first i and last n.

The two step process makes life a lot easier for the programmers, designers of the user interface and the translators, because this way each can focus on his/her work without having to learn tricks of the trade of the others.

If you’re interested to localize web software, PC software, mobile software or any other type of software, go for this quick and simple online localization tool: https://poeditor.com/ It's quick and neat and has great collaborative and crowdsourcing potential.