Is there a way to use Django's I18n features with keys in the code instead of storing the default language in the code and the others in .po/.mo files?
Something similar to Wikipedia, where the code has a "(whatlinkshere)" key that is translated in the English translation file as "What links here", in the French one as "Pages liées", etc.
I guess I could make "qqq" or "qqx" the default language and work from there, but then a person with a browser set in a non-managed language would see the keys instead of English.
The problem with having the English as default in the code is that if you make a slight adjustment to a string in English, the translation is lost altogether in the other language versions.
Related
I just got done reading the Django docs on internationalization and something is bugging me.
It seems like the default language strings are themselves used as the keys for retrieving translations. That's perfectly fine for short text, but for paragraphs, it seems like poor design. Now, whenever I change the English (default) text, my keys change and I need to manually update my .po file?
It seems like using keys like "INTRO_TEXT" and retrieving the default language from it's own .po file is the right approach. How have others approached this problem and what has worked well for you?
Yes, you will have to manually update the PO files, but most of the times it will be limited to remove the fuzzy marks on out-of-date translations (gettext marks translations as fuzzy when the original version is modified).
I personally prefer this approach as it keeps the text content in the source code which makes it much more readable (especially for HTML). I also find it hard to find good and concise string identifiers, poorly named identifiers are headache prone.
Django-rosetta will be of great help if you do not want to edit PO files by hand or want to delegate translations to non developers.
My application is localized for multiple languages (write in VS2005 in c++).
What would happen if the application is run in a language whose localized files does not exist? For instance I have not localized for Dutch. what would happen when its run on a Dutch pc?
The load order is:
Primary language/sublanguage
Primary language
Language-neutral
English (skipped if primary language is English)
Any
(Taken from MSDN Blog).
So in your case you might end up with any of the languages you put in the ressources. If you want to influence the language taken, you can set the threads locale before loading a ressource. That's the way I did in programs: if locale is German, then keep it, otherwise change it to English so that international users always see the English GUI.
Question
I am trying to match browsers set to Scandinavian languages based on HTTP header "Accept-Language".
My regex is:
^(nb|nn|no|sv|se|da|dk).*
My question is if this is sufficient, and if anyone know about any other odd scandinavian (but "valid") language codes or obscure browser bugs causing false positives?
Used for
The regex is used for displaying a english link in the top of the Norwegian web pages (which is the primary language and the root of the domain and sub-domains) that takes you to the English web pages (secondary language and folder under root) when the browser language is not Scandinavian. The link can be closed / "opted-out" with hash stored in JavaScript localStorage if the user don't want to see the link again. We decided not to use IP geo-location because of limited time to implement.
Depending on the language you are working in there may be code in place you can use to parse this easily, e.g. this post: Parse Accept-Language header in Java <-- Also provides a good code example
Further - are you sure you want to limit your regex to the start of the string, as several lanaguages can be provided (the first is intended to be "I prefer x but also accept the following") : http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.4
Otherwise your regex should work fine based on the what you were asking and here is a list of all browser language codes: http://www.metamodpro.com/browser-language-codes
I would also - in your shoes, make the "switch to X language" link easy to find for all users until they had opted not to see it again. I would expect many people may have a preference set by default in their browser but find a site actually using it to be unexpected i.e. a user experience like:
I prefer english but don't know enough to change this setting and have never had a reason to before as so few sites make use of it.
That regular expression is enough if you are testing each item in accept-language individually.
If not individually, there are 2 problems:
One of the expected languages could not appear at the beginning of the header, but after.
Some of the expected languages abbreviations could appear as qualifier of a completely different language.
I maintain a pluggable Django app that contains translations. All strings in Python and HTML code are written in English. When translating the strings to German, I'm always fighting with the problem that German differentiates between formal and informal speech (see T–V distinction). Because the app is used on different sites, ranging from a social network to a banking website, I can't just support either the formal or informal version. And since the translations can differ quite a bit, there's no way I can parameterize it. E.g. the sentence "Do you want to log out?" would have these two translations:
Wollen Sie sich abmelden? (formal)
Willst du dich abmelden? (informal)
Is there anything in Gettext that could help me with this?
You can use contextual markers to give your translations additional context.
logout = pgettext('casual', 'Do you want to log out?')
...
logout = pgettext('formal', 'Do you want to log out?')
The best approach, used in other similar situations by gettext as well as UNIX is to use locale variants. For example, sr_RS is (or was, because Serbian is considered a metalanguage these days...) code used for Serbian written in Cyrillic. But it’s sometimes written in Latin script too, so sr_RS#latin is used as the language name and of course, the MO filename or directory as well.
Here, have a look at some translations I have present on my system:
$ find /usr/local/share/locale | grep /sr
/usr/local/share/locale/sr
/usr/local/share/locale/sr/LC_MESSAGES
/usr/local/share/locale/sr/LC_MESSAGES/bash.mo
/usr/local/share/locale/sr/LC_MESSAGES/bfd.mo
/usr/local/share/locale/sr/LC_MESSAGES/binutils.mo
/usr/local/share/locale/sr/LC_MESSAGES/gettext-runtime.mo
/usr/local/share/locale/sr/LC_MESSAGES/gettext-tools.mo
/usr/local/share/locale/sr/LC_MESSAGES/glib20.mo
/usr/local/share/locale/sr/LC_MESSAGES/wget.mo
/usr/local/share/locale/sr#ije
/usr/local/share/locale/sr#ije/LC_MESSAGES
/usr/local/share/locale/sr#ije/LC_MESSAGES/glib20.mo
/usr/local/share/locale/sr#latin
/usr/local/share/locale/sr#latin/LC_MESSAGES
/usr/local/share/locale/sr#latin/LC_MESSAGES/glib20.mo
/usr/local/share/locale/sr_RS
/usr/local/share/locale/sr_RS/LC_MESSAGES
/usr/local/share/locale/sr_RS/LC_MESSAGES/mkvtoolnix.mo
/usr/local/share/locale/sr_RS#latin
/usr/local/share/locale/sr_RS#latin/LC_MESSAGES
/usr/local/share/locale/sr_RS#latin/LC_MESSAGES/mkvtoolnix.mo
$
So the best way to handle German variants is the same: use de (or de_DE) for the base informal variant and have a separate translation file de_DE#formal with the formal variant of the translation.
This is basically what WordPress does too. Of course, being WordPress, they have their own special flavour and don’t use the variant syntax, but instead add a third component to the filename: de_DE.mo is the informal (and also fallback, because it lacks any further specification) variant and de_DE_formal.mo contains the formal variant.
I'm trying to find a way to do this.
My game is multilingual.
I have English.txt, French.txt, etc..
I'm wondering what would be a good way to store it in the file for example:
<sendbutton.tooltip>
Use this button to send text.
The text can be as long as you like!
</sendbutton.tooltip>
or
sendbutton.tooltip = Use this button to send text.\n\nThe text can be as long as you like!
I then will map these strings to their element name for runtime use.
Other than using a standard like XML, what is usually done to do this?
Thanks
Usually this kind of localization tasks is done with GNU gettext.
It depends when are you going to load the file.
For standard translation stuff, I recommend you take a look at gettext. It provides translation tools and easy way to include it. You can store English text a C strings enclosed with translation macro () or T() or whatever, and gettext would provide you with strings that need translating. It also tracks the translations that need to be updated when original English text changes. You store all translations for specific language in separate files.
Not sure for C++ but maybe resource files where you create a separate file for each language and have key/value pairs for the lookup with each langauge using the same key but message text is in the correct language e.g.
resources.de
LOGOUT, Abmelden
resources.en
LOGOUT, Logout
then depending on users language choice, you load the appropriate resource file to display the correct text. Think you would just store the mutlilines with /n as in your second example.