Python i18n
Notice: This is an ongoing tutorial, and some things need be verified in order to ensure that things are done by the book. Take it as a first test-drive of the steps needed to internationalize (i18n) an activity that will later be localized (l10n) to each country/language/region.
Localization within Python/Pygame
Following the WxPython i18n tutorial, I added the following code at the top of my application:
import gettext
gettext.install('kuku', './locale', unicode=False)
#one line for each language
presLan_en = gettext.translation("kuku", os.path.join(get_bundle_path(),'locale'), languages=['en'])
presLan_sw = gettext.translation("kuku", os.path.join(get_bundle_path(),'locale'), languages=['sw'])
#only install one language - add program logic later
presLan_en.install()
# presLan_sw.install()
Here my application is called kuku.py, and I am using 'kuku' to be the domain of my i18n. Now I choose which strings I needed to localize within my application file kuku.py - these strings I surrounded with _(). For example
message = _('Begin!')
Next I need to create the i18n files. First I create a directory called 'locale' within my activity directory (this is referred to in the above lines (presLan_en ...). The first step is to make a pot file, which I use pygettext.py to process kuku.py
python <path to your python distribution>/Tools/i18n/pygettext.py -o kuku.pot kuku.py
which creates kuku.pot. When first created it looks like
# SOME DESCRIPTIVE TITLE. # Copyright (C) YEAR ORGANIZATION # FIRST AUTHOR <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR. # msgid "" msgstr "" "Project-Id-Version: PACKAGE VERSION\n" "POT-Creation-Date: 2007-06-19 17:45+EDT\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=CHARSET\n" "Content-Transfer-Encoding: ENCODING\n" "Generated-By: pygettext.py 1.5\n" #: kuku.py:501 msgid "Begin!" msgstr ""
The last little bit is the stuff we have to translate. I had to modify the stuff at the top to change the ENCODING and CHARSET. I changed both of these to utf-8, so my file now reads:
# SOME DESCRIPTIVE TITLE. # Copyright (C) YEAR ORGANIZATION # FIRST AUTHOR <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR. # msgid "" msgstr "" "Project-Id-Version: PACKAGE VERSION\n" "POT-Creation-Date: 2007-06-19 17:15+EDT\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: utf-8\n" "Generated-By: pygettext.py 1.5\n" #: kuku.py:500 msgid "Begin!" msgstr ""
Now I moved kuku.pot to ./locale . Then for each language I want to localize to, I create subdirectories within ./locale according to their language codes. Within each of these subdirectories, I create subdirectories called LC_MESSAGES. For know I am using english and swahili, so my directory structure looks like
locale/
kuku.pot
en/
LC_MESSAGES/
sw/
LC_MESSAGES/
Now we do translations. I copied kuku.pot into ./locale/en/LC_MESSAGES/kuku.po and ./locale/sw/LC_MESSAGES/kuku.po, and performed the translations:
#./locale/en/LC_MESSAGES/kuku.po # SOME DESCRIPTIVE TITLE. # Copyright (C) YEAR ORGANIZATION # FIRST AUTHOR <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR. # msgid "" msgstr "" "Project-Id-Version: PACKAGE VERSION\n" "POT-Creation-Date: 2007-06-19 17:15+EDT\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: utf-8\n" "Generated-By: pygettext.py 1.5\n" #: kuku.py:500 msgid "Begin!" msgstr "Begin!"
#./locale/sw/LC_MESSAGES/kuku.po # SOME DESCRIPTIVE TITLE. # Copyright (C) YEAR ORGANIZATION # FIRST AUTHOR <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR. # msgid "" msgstr "" "Project-Id-Version: PACKAGE VERSION\n" "POT-Creation-Date: 2007-06-19 17:15+EDT\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: utf-8\n" "Generated-By: pygettext.py 1.5\n" #: kuku.py:500 msgid "Begin!" msgstr "Kuanza!"
Now my directory structure looks like
locale/
kuku.pot
en/
LC_MESSAGES/
kuku.po
sw/
LC_MESSAGES/
kuku.po
One last step before we are ready to go. We need to make the binary files used by gettext. We do that with msgfmt.py:
cd <project path>/locale/en/LC_MESSAGES/ python <path to your python distribution>/Tools/i18n/msgfmt.py kuku.po cd <project path>/locale/en/LC_MESSAGES/ python <path to your python distribution>/Tools/i18n/msgfmt.py kuku.po
This creates binary .mo files, and now my directory structure looks like:
locale/
kuku.pot
en/
LC_MESSAGES/
kuku.po
kuku.mo
sw/
LC_MESSAGES/
kuku.po
kuku.mo
To add new languages, we need to add a subdirectory for each language, perform the translations, create the .mo files, and add the relevant code in the application to select the language.
Sidebar: Getting non-latin text from translation web sites
If you are running Gnome, you can do the following.
Here is an arabic google translation of "hi". Open a gnome-terminal, and run "cat > tmpfile". Cut-and-paste the arabic into the terminal, and thus the tmpfile. This avoids mangling the text as encoding information is lost.
In emacs (and perhaps other editors as well?), insert the tmpfile. And that's it. You can test this all by creating a two line python file,
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*- print u'the string goes here'
And running it in the terminal.
I haven't tried this with po files yet.
Resources
These are the two docs that I used to learn about i18n (with no prior knowledge). Read the WxPython reference first, and instead of using the mki18n.py file mentioned on the WkPython page, use the tools in the Python standard distribution: pygettext.py and msgfmt.py.
See also
- Babel - A collection of tools for internationalizing Python applications.