Internationalization and Localization¶

Introduction¶

Internationalization and localization are means of adapting software for non-native environments, especially for other nations and cultures.

Parts of an application which might need to be localized might include:

Language
Date/time format
Formatting of numbers e.g. decimal points, positioning of separators, character used as separator
Time zones (UTC in internationalized environments)
Currency
Weights and measures

The distinction between internationalization and localization is subtle but important. Internationalization is the adaptation of products for potential use virtually everywhere, while localization is the addition of special features for use in a specific locale.

For example, in terms of language used in software, internationalization is the process of marking up all strings that might need to be translated whilst localization is the process of producing translations for a particular locale.

Pylons provides built-in support to enable you to internationalize language but leaves you to handle any other aspects of internationalization which might be appropriate to your application.

Note

Internationalization is often abbreviated as I18N (or i18n or I18n) where the number 18 refers to the number of letters omitted. Localization is often abbreviated L10n or l10n in the same manner. These abbreviations also avoid picking one spelling (internationalisation vs. internationalization, etc.) over the other.

In order to represent characters from multiple languages, you will need to utilize Unicode. This document assumes you have read the Understanding Unicode.

By now you should have a good idea of what Unicode is, how to use it in Python and which areas of you application need to pay specific attention to decoding and encoding Unicode data.

This final section will look at the issue of making your application work with multiple languages.

Pylons uses the Python gettext module for internationalization. It is based off the GNU gettext API.

Getting Started¶

Everywhere in your code where you want strings to be available in different languages you wrap them in the _() function. There are also a number of other translation functions which are documented in the API reference at http://pylonshq.com/docs/module-pylons.i18n.translation.html

Note

The _() function is a reference to the ugettext() function. _() is a convention for marking text to be translated and saves on keystrokes. ugettext() is the Unicode version of gettext(); it returns unicode strings.

In our example we want the string 'Hello' to appear in three different languages: English, French and Spanish. We also want to display the word 'Hello' in the default language. We’ll then go on to use some plural words too.

Lets call our project translate_demo:

$ paster create -t pylons translate_demo

Now lets add a friendly controller that says hello:

$ cd translate_demo
$ paster controller hello

Edit controllers/hello.py to make use of the _() function everywhere where the string Hello appears:

import logging

from pylons.i18n import get_lang, set_lang

from translate_demo.lib.base import *

log = logging.getLogger(__name__)

class HelloController(BaseController):

    def index(self):
        response.write('Default: %s<br />' % _('Hello'))
        for lang in ['fr','en','es']:
            set_lang(lang)
        response.write("%s: %s<br />" % (get_lang(), _('Hello')))

When writing wrapping strings in the gettext functions, it is important not to piece sentences together manually; certain languages might need to invert the grammars. Don’t do this:

# BAD!
msg = _("He told her ")
msg += _("not to go outside.")

but this is perfectly acceptable:

# GOOD
msg = _("He told her not to go outside")

The controller has now been internationalized, but it will raise a LanguageError until we have setup the alternative language catalogs.

GNU gettext use three types of files in the translation framework.

POT (Portable Object Template) files¶

The first step in the localization process. A program is used to search through your project’s source code and pick out every string passed to one of the translation functions, such as _(). This list is put together in a specially-formatted template file that will form the basis of all translations. This is the .pot file.

PO (Portable Object) files¶

The second step in the localization process. Using the POT file as a template, the list of messages are translated and saved as a .po file.

MO (Machine Object) files¶

The final step in the localization process. The PO file is run through a program that turns it into an optimized machine-readable binary file, which is the .mo file. Compiling the translations to machine code makes the localized program much faster in retrieving the translations while it is running.

GNU gettext provides a suite of command line programs for extracting messages from source code and working with the associated gettext catalogs. The Babel project provides pure Python alternative versions of these tools. Unlike the GNU gettext tool xgettext, Babel supports extracting translatable strings from Python templating languages (currently Mako and Genshi).

Using Babel¶

To use Babel, you must first install it via easy_install. Run the command:

$ easy_install Babel

Pylons (as of 0.9.6) includes some sane defaults for Babel’s distutils commands in the setup.cfg file.

It also includes an extraction method mapping in the setup.py file. It is commented out by default, to avoid distutils warning about it being an unrecognized option when Babel is not installed. These lines should be uncommented before proceeding with the rest of this walk through:

message_extractors = {'translate_demo': [
        ('**.py', 'python', None),
        ('templates/**.mako', 'mako', None),
        ('public/**', 'ignore', None)]},

We’ll use Babel to extract messages to a .pot file in your project’s i18n directory. First, the directory needs to be created. Don’t forget to add it to your revision control system if one is in use:

$ cd translate_demo
$ mkdir translate_demo/i18n
$ svn add translate_demo/i18n

Next we can extract all messages from the project with the following command:

$ python setup.py extract_messages
running extract_messages
extracting messages from translate_demo/__init__.py
extracting messages from translate_demo/websetup.py
...
extracting messages from translate_demo/tests/functional/test_hello.py
writing PO template file to translate_demo/i18n/translate_demo.pot

This will create a .pot file in the i18n directory that looks something like this:

# Translations template for translate_demo.
# Copyright (C) 2007 ORGANIZATION
# This file is distributed under the same license as the translate_demo project.
# FIRST AUTHOR <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, 2007.
#
#, fuzzy
msgid ""
msgstr ""
"Project-Id-Version: translate_demo 0.0.0\n"
"Report-Msgid-Bugs-To: EMAIL@ADDRESS\n"
"POT-Creation-Date: 2007-08-02 18:01-0700\n"
"PO-Revision-Date: YEAR-MO-DA HO:MI+ZONE\n"
"Last-Translator: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>\n"
"Language-Team: LANGUAGE <LL@li.org>\n"
"MIME-Version: 1.0\n"
"Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8\n"
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n"
"Generated-By: Babel 0.9dev-r215\n"

#: translate_demo/controllers/hello.py:10 translate_demo/controllers/hello.py:13
msgid "Hello"
msgstr ""

The .pot details that appear here can be customized via the extract_messages configuration in your project’s setup.cfg (See the Babel Command-Line Interface Documentation for all configuration options).

Next, we’ll initialize a catalog (.po file) for the Spanish language:

$ python setup.py init_catalog -l es
running init_catalog
creating catalog 'translate_demo/i18n/es/LC_MESSAGES/translate_demo.po' based on
'translate_demo/i18n/translate_demo.pot'

Then we can edit the last line of the new Spanish .po file to add a translation of "Hello":

msgid "Hello"
msgstr "¡Hola!"

Finally, to utilize these translations in our application, we need to compile the .po file to a .mo file:

$ python setup.py compile_catalog
running compile_catalog
1 of 1 messages (100%) translated in 'translate_demo/i18n/es/LC_MESSAGES/translate_demo.po'
compiling catalog 'translate_demo/i18n/es/LC_MESSAGES/translate_demo.po' to
'translate_demo/i18n/es/LC_MESSAGES/translate_demo.mo'

We can also use the update_catalog command to merge new messages from the .pot to the .po files. For example, if we later added the following line of code to the end of HelloController’s index method:

response.write('Goodbye: %s' % _('Goodbye'))

We’d then need to re-extract the messages from the project, then run the update_catalog command:

$ python setup.py extract_messages
running extract_messages
extracting messages from translate_demo/__init__.py
extracting messages from translate_demo/websetup.py
...
extracting messages from translate_demo/tests/functional/test_hello.py
writing PO template file to translate_demo/i18n/translate_demo.pot
$ python setup.py update_catalog
running update_catalog
updating catalog 'translate_demo/i18n/es/LC_MESSAGES/translate_demo.po' based on
'translate_demo/i18n/translate_demo.pot'

We’d then edit our catalog to add a translation for “Goodbye”, and recompile the .po file as we did above.

For more information, see the Babel documentation and the GNU Gettext Manual.

Back To Work¶

Next we’ll need to repeat the process of creating a .mo file for the en and fr locales:

$ python setup.py init_catalog -l en
running init_catalog
creating catalog 'translate_demo/i18n/en/LC_MESSAGES/translate_demo.po' based on
'translate_demo/i18n/translate_demo.pot'
$ python setup.py init_catalog -l fr
running init_catalog
creating catalog 'translate_demo/i18n/fr/LC_MESSAGES/translate_demo.po' based on
'translate_demo/i18n/translate_demo.pot'

Modify the last line of the fr catalog to look like this:

#: translate_demo/controllers/hello.py:10 translate_demo/controllers/hello.py:13
msgid "Hello"
msgstr "Bonjour"

Since our original messages are already in English, the en catalog can stay blank; gettext will fallback to the original.

Once you’ve edited these new .po files and compiled them to .mo files, you’ll end up with an i18n directory containing:

i18n/translate_demo.pot
i18n/en/LC_MESSAGES/translate_demo.po
i18n/en/LC_MESSAGES/translate_demo.mo
i18n/es/LC_MESSAGES/translate_demo.po
i18n/es/LC_MESSAGES/translate_demo.mo
i18n/fr/LC_MESSAGES/translate_demo.po
i18n/fr/LC_MESSAGES/translate_demo.mo

Testing the Application¶

Start the server with the following command:

$ paster serve --reload development.ini

Test your controller by visiting http://localhost:5000/hello. You should see the following output:

Default: Hello
fr: Bonjour
en: Hello
es: ¡Hola!

You can now set the language used in a controller on the fly.

For example this could be used to allow a user to set which language they wanted your application to work in. You could save the value to the session object:

session['lang'] = 'en'
session.save()

then on each controller call the language to be used could be read from the session and set in your controller’s __before__() method so that the pages remained in the same language that was previously set:

def __before__(self):
    if 'lang' in session:
        set_lang(session['lang'])

Pylons also supports defining the default language to be used in the configuration file. Set a lang variable to the desired default language in your development.ini file, and Pylons will automatically call set_lang with that language at the beginning of every request.

E.g. to set the default language to Spanish, you would add lang = es to your development.ini:

[app:main]
use = egg:translate_demo
lang = es

If you are running the server with the --reload option the server will automatically restart if you change the development.ini file. Otherwise restart the server manually and the output would this time be as follows:

Default: ¡Hola!
fr: Bonjour
en: Hello
es: ¡Hola!

Fallback Languages¶

If your code calls _() with a string that doesn’t exist at all in your language catalog, the string passed to _() is returned instead.

Modify the last line of the hello controller to look like this:

response.write("%s %s, %s" % (_('Hello'), _('World'), _('Hi!')))

Warning

Of course, in real life breaking up sentences in this way is very dangerous because some grammars might require the order of the words to be different.

If you run the example again the output will be:

Default: ¡Hola!
fr: Bonjour World!
en: Hello World!
es: ¡Hola! World!

This is because we never provided a translation for the string 'World!' so the string itself is used.

Pylons also provides a mechanism for fallback languages, so that you can specify other languages to be used if the word is omitted from the main language’s catalog.

In this example we choose fr as the main language but es as a fallback:

import logging

from pylons.i18n import set_lang

from translate_demo.lib.base import *

log = logging.getLogger(__name__)

class HelloController(BaseController):

    def index(self):
        set_lang(['fr', 'es'])
        return "%s %s, %s" % (_('Hello'), _('World'), _('Hi!'))

If Hello is in the fr .mo file as Bonjour, World is only in es as Mundo and none of the catalogs contain Hi!, you’ll get the multilingual message: Bonjour Mundo, Hi!. This is a combination of the French, Spanish and original (English in this case, as defined in our source code) words.

You can also add fallback languages after calling set_lang via the pylons.i18n.add_fallback function. Translations will be tested in the order you add them.

Note

Fallbacks are reset after calling set_lang(lang) – that is, fallbacks are associated with the currently selected language.

One case where using fallbacks in this way is particularly useful is when you wish to display content based on the languages requested by the browser in the HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE header. Typically the browser may submit a number of languages so it is useful to be add fallbacks in the order specified by the browser so that you always try to display words in the language of preference and search the other languages in order if a translation cannot be found. The languages defined in the HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE header are available in Pylons as request.languages and can be used like this:

for lang in request.languages:
    add_fallback(lang)

Translations Within Templates¶

You can also use the _() function within templates in exactly the same way you do in code. For example, in a Mako template:

${_('Hello')}

would produce the string 'Hello' in the language you had set.

Babel currently supports extracting gettext messages from Mako and Genshi templates. The Mako extractor also provides support for translator comments. Babel can be extended to extract messages from other sources via a custom extraction method plugin.

Pylons (as of 0.9.6) automatically configures a Babel extraction mapping for your Python source code and Mako templates. This is defined in your project’s setup.py file:

message_extractors = {'translate_demo': [
        ('**.py', 'python', None),
        ('templates/**.mako', 'mako', None),
        ('public/**', 'ignore', None)]},

For a project using Genshi instead of Mako, the Mako line might be replaced with:

('templates/**.html, 'genshi', None),

See Babel’s documentation on Message Extraction for more information.

Lazy Translations¶

Occasionally you might come across a situation when you need to translate a string when it is accessed, not when the _() or other functions are called.

Consider this example:

import logging

from pylons.i18n import get_lang, set_lang

from translate_demo.lib.base import *

log = logging.getLogger(__name__)

text = _('Hello')

class HelloController(BaseController):

    def index(self):
        response.write('Default: %s<br />' % _('Hello'))
        for lang in ['fr','en','es']:
            set_lang(lang)
        response.write("%s: %s<br />" % (get_lang(), _('Hello')))
        response.write('Text: %s<br />' % text)

If we run this we get the following output:

Default: Hello
['fr']: Bonjour
['en']: Good morning
['es']: Hola
Text: Hello

This is because the function _('Hello') just after the imports is called when the default language is en so the variable text gets the value of the English translation even though when the string was used the default language was Spanish.

The rule of thumb in these situations is to try to avoid using the translation functions in situations where they are not executed on each request. For situations where this isn’t possible, perhaps because you are working with legacy code or with a library which doesn’t support internationalization, you need to use lazy translations.

If we modify the above example so that the import statements and assignment to text look like this:

from pylons.i18n import get_lang, lazy_gettext, set_lang

from helloworld.lib.base import *

log = logging.getLogger(__name__)

text = lazy_gettext('Hello')

then we get the output we expected:

Default: Hello
['fr']: Bonjour
['en']: Good morning
['es']: Hola
Text: Hola

There are lazy versions of all the standard Pylons translation functions.

There is one drawback to be aware of when using the lazy translation functions: they are not actually strings. This means that if our example had used the following code it would have failed with an error cannot concatenate 'str' and 'LazyString' objects:

response.write('Text: ' + text + '<br />')

For this reason you should only use the lazy translations where absolutely necessary and should always ensure they are converted to strings by calling str() or repr() before they are used in operations with real strings.

Producing a Python Egg¶

Finally you can produce an egg of your project which includes the translation files like this:

$ python setup.py bdist_egg

The setup.py automatically includes the .mo language catalogs your application needs so that your application can be distributed as an egg. This is done with the following line in your setup.py file:

package_data={'translate_demo': ['i18n/*/LC_MESSAGES/*.mo']},

Plural Forms¶

Pylons also provides the ungettext() function. It’s designed for internationalizing plural words, and can be used as follows:

ungettext('There is %(num)d file here', 'There are %(num)d files here',
          n) % {'num': n}

Plural forms have a different type of entry in .pot/.po files, as described in The Format of PO Files in GNU Gettext’s Manual:

#: translate_demo/controllers/hello.py:12
#, python-format
msgid "There is %(num)d file here"
msgid_plural "There are %(num)d files here"
msgstr[0] ""
msgstr[1] ""

One thing to keep in mind is that other languages don’t have the same plural forms as English. While English only has 2 plural forms, singular and plural, Slovenian has 4! That means that you must use ugettext for proper pluralization. Specifically, the following will not work:

# BAD!
if n == 1:
    msg = _("There was no dog.")
else:
    msg = _("There were no dogs.")

Summary¶

This document only covers the basics of internationalizing and localizing a web application.

GNU Gettext is an extensive library, and the GNU Gettext Manual is highly recommended for more information.

Babel also provides support for interfacing to the CLDR (Common Locale Data Repository), providing access to various locale display names, localized number and date formatting, etc.

You should also be able to internationalize and then localize your application using Pylons’ support for GNU gettext.

`babel.core` – Babel core classes¶

Integrated collection of utilities that assist in internationalizing and localizing applications.

This package is basically composed of two major parts:

tools to build and work with gettext message catalogs

a Python interface to the CLDR (Common Locale Data Repository), providing access to various locale display names, localized number and date formatting, etc.

see:	http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/
see:	http://docs.python.org/lib/module-gettext.html
see:	http://www.unicode.org/cldr/

Module Contents¶

class babel.Locale(language, territory=None, script=None, variant=None)¶

Representation of a specific locale.

>>> locale = Locale('en', 'US')
>>> repr(locale)
'<Locale "en_US">'
>>> locale.display_name
u'English (United States)'

A Locale object can also be instantiated from a raw locale string:

>>> locale = Locale.parse('en-US', sep='-')
>>> repr(locale)
'<Locale "en_US">'

Locale objects provide access to a collection of locale data, such as territory and language names, number and date format patterns, and more:

>>> locale.number_symbols['decimal']
u'.'

If a locale is requested for which no locale data is available, an UnknownLocaleError is raised:

>>> Locale.parse('en_DE')
Traceback (most recent call last):
    ...
UnknownLocaleError: unknown locale 'en_DE'

See :	IETF RFC 3066

currencies¶

Mapping of currency codes to translated currency names.

>>> Locale('en').currencies['COP']
u'Colombian Peso'
>>> Locale('de', 'DE').currencies['COP']
u'Kolumbianischer Peso'

Type :	dict

currency_formats¶

Locale patterns for currency number formatting.

>>> print Locale('en', 'US').currency_formats[None]
<NumberPattern u'\xa4#,##0.00'>

Type :	dict

currency_symbols¶

Mapping of currency codes to symbols.

>>> Locale('en', 'US').currency_symbols['USD']
u'$'
>>> Locale('es', 'CO').currency_symbols['USD']
u'US$'

Type :	dict

date_formats¶

Locale patterns for date formatting.

>>> Locale('en', 'US').date_formats['short']
<DateTimePattern u'M/d/yy'>
>>> Locale('fr', 'FR').date_formats['long']
<DateTimePattern u'd MMMM yyyy'>

Type :	dict

datetime_formats¶

Locale patterns for datetime formatting.

>>> Locale('en').datetime_formats[None]
u'{1} {0}'
>>> Locale('th').datetime_formats[None]
u'{1}, {0}'

Type :	dict

days¶

Locale display names for weekdays.

>>> Locale('de', 'DE').days['format']['wide'][3]
u'Donnerstag'

Type :	dict

decimal_formats¶

Locale patterns for decimal number formatting.

>>> Locale('en', 'US').decimal_formats[None]
<NumberPattern u'#,##0.###'>

Type :	dict

classmethod default(category=None, aliases={'el': 'el_GR', 'fi': 'fi_FI', 'bg': 'bg_BG', 'uk': 'uk_UA', 'tr': 'tr_TR', 'ca': 'ca_ES', 'de': 'de_DE', 'fr': 'fr_FR', 'da': 'da_DK', 'fa': 'fa_IR', 'ar': 'ar_SY', 'mk': 'mk_MK', 'bs': 'bs_BA', 'cs': 'cs_CZ', 'et': 'et_EE', 'gl': 'gl_ES', 'id': 'id_ID', 'es': 'es_ES', 'he': 'he_IL', 'ru': 'ru_RU', 'nl': 'nl_NL', 'pt': 'pt_PT', 'nn': 'nn_NO', 'no': 'nb_NO', 'ko': 'ko_KR', 'sv': 'sv_SE', 'km': 'km_KH', 'ja': 'ja_JP', 'lv': 'lv_LV', 'lt': 'lt_LT', 'en': 'en_US', 'sk': 'sk_SK', 'th': 'th_TH', 'sl': 'sl_SI', 'it': 'it_IT', 'hu': 'hu_HU', 'ro': 'ro_RO', 'is': 'is_IS', 'pl': 'pl_PL'})¶

Return the system default locale for the specified category.

>>> for name in ['LANGUAGE', 'LC_ALL', 'LC_CTYPE']:
...     os.environ[name] = ''
>>> os.environ['LANG'] = 'fr_FR.UTF-8'
>>> Locale.default('LC_MESSAGES')
<Locale "fr_FR">

Parameters:	category – one of the `LC_XXX` environment variable names aliases – a dictionary of aliases for locale identifiers
Returns:	the value of the variable, or any of the fallbacks (`LANGUAGE`, `LC_ALL`, `LC_CTYPE`, and `LANG`)
Return type:	Locale
See :	default_locale

display_name¶

The localized display name of the locale.

>>> Locale('en').display_name
u'English'
>>> Locale('en', 'US').display_name
u'English (United States)'
>>> Locale('sv').display_name
u'svenska'

Type :	unicode

english_name¶

The english display name of the locale.

>>> Locale('de').english_name
u'German'
>>> Locale('de', 'DE').english_name
u'German (Germany)'

Type :	unicode

eras¶

Locale display names for eras.

>>> Locale('en', 'US').eras['wide'][1]
u'Anno Domini'
>>> Locale('en', 'US').eras['abbreviated'][0]
u'BC'

Type :	dict

first_week_day¶

The first day of a week, with 0 being Monday.

>>> Locale('de', 'DE').first_week_day
0
>>> Locale('en', 'US').first_week_day
6

Type :	int

get_display_name(locale=None)¶

Return the display name of the locale using the given locale.

The display name will include the language, territory, script, and variant, if those are specified.

>>> Locale('zh', 'CN', script='Hans').get_display_name('en')
u'Chinese (Simplified Han, China)'

Parameters:	locale – the locale to use
Returns:	the display name

languages¶

Mapping of language codes to translated language names.

>>> Locale('de', 'DE').languages['ja']
u'Japanisch'

Type :	dict
See :	ISO 639

meta_zones¶

Locale display names for meta time zones.

Meta time zones are basically groups of different Olson time zones that have the same GMT offset and daylight savings time.

>>> Locale('en', 'US').meta_zones['Europe_Central']['long']['daylight']
u'Central European Summer Time'

Type :	dict
Since :	version 0.9

min_week_days¶

The minimum number of days in a week so that the week is counted as the first week of a year or month.

>>> Locale('de', 'DE').min_week_days
4

Type :	int

months¶

Locale display names for months.

>>> Locale('de', 'DE').months['format']['wide'][10]
u'Oktober'

Type :	dict

classmethod negotiate(preferred, available, sep='_', aliases={'el': 'el_GR', 'fi': 'fi_FI', 'bg': 'bg_BG', 'uk': 'uk_UA', 'tr': 'tr_TR', 'ca': 'ca_ES', 'de': 'de_DE', 'fr': 'fr_FR', 'da': 'da_DK', 'fa': 'fa_IR', 'ar': 'ar_SY', 'mk': 'mk_MK', 'bs': 'bs_BA', 'cs': 'cs_CZ', 'et': 'et_EE', 'gl': 'gl_ES', 'id': 'id_ID', 'es': 'es_ES', 'he': 'he_IL', 'ru': 'ru_RU', 'nl': 'nl_NL', 'pt': 'pt_PT', 'nn': 'nn_NO', 'no': 'nb_NO', 'ko': 'ko_KR', 'sv': 'sv_SE', 'km': 'km_KH', 'ja': 'ja_JP', 'lv': 'lv_LV', 'lt': 'lt_LT', 'en': 'en_US', 'sk': 'sk_SK', 'th': 'th_TH', 'sl': 'sl_SI', 'it': 'it_IT', 'hu': 'hu_HU', 'ro': 'ro_RO', 'is': 'is_IS', 'pl': 'pl_PL'})¶

Find the best match between available and requested locale strings.

>>> Locale.negotiate(['de_DE', 'en_US'], ['de_DE', 'de_AT'])
<Locale "de_DE">
>>> Locale.negotiate(['de_DE', 'en_US'], ['en', 'de'])
<Locale "de">
>>> Locale.negotiate(['de_DE', 'de'], ['en_US'])

You can specify the character used in the locale identifiers to separate the differnet components. This separator is applied to both lists. Also, case is ignored in the comparison:

>>> Locale.negotiate(['de-DE', 'de'], ['en-us', 'de-de'], sep='-')
<Locale "de_DE">

Parameters:	preferred – the list of locale identifers preferred by the user available – the list of locale identifiers available aliases – a dictionary of aliases for locale identifiers
Returns:	the Locale object for the best match, or None if no match was found
Return type:	Locale
See :	negotiate_locale

number_symbols¶

Symbols used in number formatting.

>>> Locale('fr', 'FR').number_symbols['decimal']
u','

Type :	dict

classmethod parse(identifier, sep='_')¶

Create a Locale instance for the given locale identifier.

>>> l = Locale.parse('de-DE', sep='-')
>>> l.display_name
u'Deutsch (Deutschland)'

If the identifier parameter is not a string, but actually a Locale object, that object is returned:

>>> Locale.parse(l)
<Locale "de_DE">

Parameters:	identifier – the locale identifier string sep – optional component separator
Returns:	a corresponding Locale instance
Return type:	Locale
Raises:	ValueError – if the string does not appear to be a valid locale identifier UnknownLocaleError – if no locale data is available for the requested locale
See :	parse_locale

percent_formats¶

Locale patterns for percent number formatting.

>>> Locale('en', 'US').percent_formats[None]
<NumberPattern u'#,##0%'>

Type :	dict

periods¶

Locale display names for day periods (AM/PM).

>>> Locale('en', 'US').periods['am']
u'AM'

Type :	dict

quarters¶

Locale display names for quarters.

>>> Locale('de', 'DE').quarters['format']['wide'][1]
u'1. Quartal'

Type :	dict

scientific_formats¶

Locale patterns for scientific number formatting.

>>> Locale('en', 'US').scientific_formats[None]
<NumberPattern u'#E0'>

Type :	dict

scripts¶

Mapping of script codes to translated script names.

>>> Locale('en', 'US').scripts['Hira']
u'Hiragana'

Type :	dict
See :	ISO 15924

territories¶

Mapping of script codes to translated script names.

>>> Locale('es', 'CO').territories['DE']
u'Alemania'

Type :	dict
See :	ISO 3166

time_formats¶

Locale patterns for time formatting.

>>> Locale('en', 'US').time_formats['short']
<DateTimePattern u'h:mm a'>
>>> Locale('fr', 'FR').time_formats['long']
<DateTimePattern u'HH:mm:ss z'>

Type :	dict

time_zones¶

Locale display names for time zones.

>>> Locale('en', 'US').time_zones['Europe/London']['long']['daylight']
u'British Summer Time'
>>> Locale('en', 'US').time_zones['America/St_Johns']['city']
u"St. John's"

Type :	dict

variants¶

Mapping of script codes to translated script names.

>>> Locale('de', 'DE').variants['1901']
u'Alte deutsche Rechtschreibung'

Type :	dict

weekend_end¶

The day the weekend ends, with 0 being Monday.

>>> Locale('de', 'DE').weekend_end
6

Type :	int

weekend_start¶

The day the weekend starts, with 0 being Monday.

>>> Locale('de', 'DE').weekend_start
5

Type :	int

zone_formats¶

Patterns related to the formatting of time zones.

>>> Locale('en', 'US').zone_formats['fallback']
u'%(1)s (%(0)s)'
>>> Locale('pt', 'BR').zone_formats['region']
u'Hor\xe1rio %s'

Type :	dict
Since :	version 0.9

babel.default_locale(category=None, aliases={'el': 'el_GR', 'fi': 'fi_FI', 'bg': 'bg_BG', 'uk': 'uk_UA', 'tr': 'tr_TR', 'ca': 'ca_ES', 'de': 'de_DE', 'fr': 'fr_FR', 'da': 'da_DK', 'fa': 'fa_IR', 'ar': 'ar_SY', 'mk': 'mk_MK', 'bs': 'bs_BA', 'cs': 'cs_CZ', 'et': 'et_EE', 'gl': 'gl_ES', 'id': 'id_ID', 'es': 'es_ES', 'he': 'he_IL', 'ru': 'ru_RU', 'nl': 'nl_NL', 'pt': 'pt_PT', 'nn': 'nn_NO', 'no': 'nb_NO', 'ko': 'ko_KR', 'sv': 'sv_SE', 'km': 'km_KH', 'ja': 'ja_JP', 'lv': 'lv_LV', 'lt': 'lt_LT', 'en': 'en_US', 'sk': 'sk_SK', 'th': 'th_TH', 'sl': 'sl_SI', 'it': 'it_IT', 'hu': 'hu_HU', 'ro': 'ro_RO', 'is': 'is_IS', 'pl': 'pl_PL'})¶

Returns the system default locale for a given category, based on environment variables.

>>> for name in ['LANGUAGE', 'LC_ALL', 'LC_CTYPE']:
...     os.environ[name] = ''
>>> os.environ['LANG'] = 'fr_FR.UTF-8'
>>> default_locale('LC_MESSAGES')
'fr_FR'

The “C” or “POSIX” pseudo-locales are treated as aliases for the “en_US_POSIX” locale:

>>> os.environ['LC_MESSAGES'] = 'POSIX'
>>> default_locale('LC_MESSAGES')
'en_US_POSIX'

Parameters:	category – one of the `LC_XXX` environment variable names aliases – a dictionary of aliases for locale identifiers
Returns:	the value of the variable, or any of the fallbacks (`LANGUAGE`, `LC_ALL`, `LC_CTYPE`, and `LANG`)
Return type:	str

babel.negotiate_locale(preferred, available, sep='_', aliases={'el': 'el_GR', 'fi': 'fi_FI', 'bg': 'bg_BG', 'uk': 'uk_UA', 'tr': 'tr_TR', 'ca': 'ca_ES', 'de': 'de_DE', 'fr': 'fr_FR', 'da': 'da_DK', 'fa': 'fa_IR', 'ar': 'ar_SY', 'mk': 'mk_MK', 'bs': 'bs_BA', 'cs': 'cs_CZ', 'et': 'et_EE', 'gl': 'gl_ES', 'id': 'id_ID', 'es': 'es_ES', 'he': 'he_IL', 'ru': 'ru_RU', 'nl': 'nl_NL', 'pt': 'pt_PT', 'nn': 'nn_NO', 'no': 'nb_NO', 'ko': 'ko_KR', 'sv': 'sv_SE', 'km': 'km_KH', 'ja': 'ja_JP', 'lv': 'lv_LV', 'lt': 'lt_LT', 'en': 'en_US', 'sk': 'sk_SK', 'th': 'th_TH', 'sl': 'sl_SI', 'it': 'it_IT', 'hu': 'hu_HU', 'ro': 'ro_RO', 'is': 'is_IS', 'pl': 'pl_PL'})¶

Find the best match between available and requested locale strings.

>>> negotiate_locale(['de_DE', 'en_US'], ['de_DE', 'de_AT'])
'de_DE'
>>> negotiate_locale(['de_DE', 'en_US'], ['en', 'de'])
'de'

Case is ignored by the algorithm, the result uses the case of the preferred locale identifier:

>>> negotiate_locale(['de_DE', 'en_US'], ['de_de', 'de_at'])
'de_DE'

>>> negotiate_locale(['de_DE', 'en_US'], ['de_de', 'de_at'])
'de_DE'

By default, some web browsers unfortunately do not include the territory in the locale identifier for many locales, and some don’t even allow the user to easily add the territory. So while you may prefer using qualified locale identifiers in your web-application, they would not normally match the language-only locale sent by such browsers. To workaround that, this function uses a default mapping of commonly used langauge-only locale identifiers to identifiers including the territory:

>>> negotiate_locale(['ja', 'en_US'], ['ja_JP', 'en_US'])
'ja_JP'

Some browsers even use an incorrect or outdated language code, such as “no” for Norwegian, where the correct locale identifier would actually be “nb_NO” (Bokmål) or “nn_NO” (Nynorsk). The aliases are intended to take care of such cases, too:

>>> negotiate_locale(['no', 'sv'], ['nb_NO', 'sv_SE'])
'nb_NO'

You can override this default mapping by passing a different aliases dictionary to this function, or you can bypass the behavior althogher by setting the aliases parameter to None.

Parameters:	preferred – the list of locale strings preferred by the user available – the list of locale strings available sep – character that separates the different parts of the locale strings aliases – a dictionary of aliases for locale identifiers
Returns:	the locale identifier for the best match, or None if no match was found
Return type:	str

babel.parse_locale(identifier, sep='_')¶

Parse a locale identifier into a tuple of the form:

``(language, territory, script, variant)``

>>> parse_locale('zh_CN')
('zh', 'CN', None, None)
>>> parse_locale('zh_Hans_CN')
('zh', 'CN', 'Hans', None)

The default component separator is “_”, but a different separator can be specified using the sep parameter:

>>> parse_locale('zh-CN', sep='-')
('zh', 'CN', None, None)

If the identifier cannot be parsed into a locale, a ValueError exception is raised:

>>> parse_locale('not_a_LOCALE_String')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  ...
ValueError: 'not_a_LOCALE_String' is not a valid locale identifier

Encoding information and locale modifiers are removed from the identifier:

>>> parse_locale('it_IT@euro')
('it', 'IT', None, None)
>>> parse_locale('en_US.UTF-8')
('en', 'US', None, None)
>>> parse_locale('de_DE.iso885915@euro')
('de', 'DE', None, None)

Raises ValueError:
Parameters:	identifier – the locale identifier string sep – character that separates the different components of the locale identifier
Returns:	the `(language, territory, script, variant)` tuple
Return type:	tuple
	if the string does not appear to be a valid locale identifier
See :	IETF RFC 4646

`babel.localedata` — Babel locale data¶

Low-level locale data access.

note:	The Locale class, which uses this module under the hood, provides a more convenient interface for accessing the locale data.

babel.localedata.exists(name)¶

Check whether locale data is available for the given locale.

Parameters:	name – the locale identifier string
Returns:	True if the locale data exists, False otherwise
Return type:	bool

babel.localedata.exists(name)

Check whether locale data is available for the given locale.

Parameters:	name – the locale identifier string
Returns:	True if the locale data exists, False otherwise
Return type:	bool

`babel.dates` – Babel date classes¶

Locale dependent formatting and parsing of dates and times.

The default locale for the functions in this module is determined by the following environment variables, in that order:

LC_TIME,

LC_ALL, and

LANG

Module Contents¶

class babel.dates.DateTimeFormat(value, locale)¶

get_week_number(day_of_period, day_of_week=None)¶

Return the number of the week of a day within a period. This may be the week number in a year or the week number in a month.

Usually this will return a value equal to or greater than 1, but if the first week of the period is so short that it actually counts as the last week of the previous period, this function will return 0.

>>> format = DateTimeFormat(date(2006, 1, 8), Locale.parse('de_DE'))
>>> format.get_week_number(6)
1

>>> format = DateTimeFormat(date(2006, 1, 8), Locale.parse('en_US'))
>>> format.get_week_number(6)
2

Parameters:	day_of_period – the number of the day in the period (usually either the day of month or the day of year) day_of_week – the week day; if ommitted, the week day of the current date is assumed

class babel.dates.DateTimePattern(pattern, format)¶

`babel.numbers` – Babel number classes¶

Locale dependent formatting and parsing of numeric data.

The default locale for the functions in this module is determined by the following environment variables, in that order:

LC_NUMERIC,

LC_ALL, and

LANG

Module Contents¶

class babel.numbers.NumberFormatError¶: Exception raised when a string cannot be parsed into a number.

class babel.numbers.NumberPattern(pattern, prefix, suffix, grouping, int_prec, frac_prec, exp_prec, exp_plus)¶

babel.numbers.format_number(number, locale='en_US')¶

Return the given number formatted for a specific locale.

>>> format_number(1099, locale='en_US')
u'1,099'

Parameters:	number – the number to format locale – the Locale object or locale identifier
Returns:	the formatted number
Return type:	unicode

babel.numbers.format_decimal(number, format=None, locale='en_US')¶

Return the given decimal number formatted for a specific locale.

>>> format_decimal(1.2345, locale='en_US')
u'1.234'
>>> format_decimal(1.2346, locale='en_US')
u'1.235'
>>> format_decimal(-1.2346, locale='en_US')
u'-1.235'
>>> format_decimal(1.2345, locale='sv_SE')
u'1,234'
>>> format_decimal(12345, locale='de')
u'12.345'

The appropriate thousands grouping and the decimal separator are used for each locale:

>>> format_decimal(12345.5, locale='en_US')
u'12,345.5'

Parameters:	number – the number to format format – locale – the Locale object or locale identifier
Returns:	the formatted decimal number
Return type:	unicode

babel.numbers.format_percent(number, format=None, locale='en_US')¶

Return formatted percent value for a specific locale.

>>> format_percent(0.34, locale='en_US')
u'34%'
>>> format_percent(25.1234, locale='en_US')
u'2,512%'
>>> format_percent(25.1234, locale='sv_SE')
u'2\xa0512\xa0%'

The format pattern can also be specified explicitly:

>>> format_percent(25.1234, u'#,##0\u2030', locale='en_US')
u'25,123\u2030'

Parameters:	number – the percent number to format format – locale – the Locale object or locale identifier
Returns:	the formatted percent number
Return type:	unicode

babel.numbers.format_scientific(number, format=None, locale='en_US')¶

Return value formatted in scientific notation for a specific locale.

>>> format_scientific(10000, locale='en_US')
u'1E4'

The format pattern can also be specified explicitly:

>>> format_scientific(1234567, u'##0E00', locale='en_US')
u'1.23E06'

Parameters:	number – the number to format format – locale – the Locale object or locale identifier
Returns:	value formatted in scientific notation.
Return type:	unicode

babel.numbers.parse_number(string, locale='en_US')¶

Parse localized number string into a long integer.

>>> parse_number('1,099', locale='en_US')
1099L
>>> parse_number('1.099', locale='de_DE')
1099L

When the given string cannot be parsed, an exception is raised:

>>> parse_number('1.099,98', locale='de')
Traceback (most recent call last):
    ...
NumberFormatError: '1.099,98' is not a valid number

Raises NumberFormatError:
Parameters:	string – the string to parse locale – the Locale object or locale identifier
Returns:	the parsed number
Return type:	long
	if the string can not be converted to a number

babel.numbers.parse_decimal(string, locale='en_US')¶

Parse localized decimal string into a float.

>>> parse_decimal('1,099.98', locale='en_US')
1099.98
>>> parse_decimal('1.099,98', locale='de')
1099.98

When the given string cannot be parsed, an exception is raised:

>>> parse_decimal('2,109,998', locale='de')
Traceback (most recent call last):
    ...
NumberFormatError: '2,109,998' is not a valid decimal number

Raises NumberFormatError:
Parameters:	string – the string to parse locale – the Locale object or locale identifier
Returns:	the parsed decimal number
Return type:	float
	if the string can not be converted to a decimal number

Internationalization and Localization¶

Introduction¶

Getting Started¶

POT (Portable Object Template) files¶

PO (Portable Object) files¶

MO (Machine Object) files¶

Using Babel¶

Back To Work¶

Testing the Application¶

Fallback Languages¶

Translations Within Templates¶

Lazy Translations¶

Producing a Python Egg¶

Plural Forms¶

Summary¶

Further Reading¶

`babel.core` – Babel core classes¶

Module Contents¶

`babel.localedata` — Babel locale data¶

`babel.dates` – Babel date classes¶

Module Contents¶

`babel.numbers` – Babel number classes¶

Module Contents¶

Table Of Contents

Previous topic

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This Page

Navigation

Internationalization and Localization¶

Introduction¶

Getting Started¶

POT (Portable Object Template) files¶

PO (Portable Object) files¶

MO (Machine Object) files¶

Using Babel¶

Back To Work¶

Testing the Application¶

Fallback Languages¶

Translations Within Templates¶

Lazy Translations¶

Producing a Python Egg¶

Plural Forms¶

Summary¶

Further Reading¶

babel.core – Babel core classes¶

Module Contents¶

babel.localedata — Babel locale data¶

babel.dates – Babel date classes¶

Module Contents¶

babel.numbers – Babel number classes¶

Module Contents¶

Table Of Contents

Previous topic

Next topic

This Page

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Navigation

`babel.core` – Babel core classes¶

`babel.localedata` — Babel locale data¶

`babel.dates` – Babel date classes¶

`babel.numbers` – Babel number classes¶