Fixed #17087 -- Re-organized the i18n docs to reduce confusion between...

.. _using-translations-in-your-own-projects:

===============================================

Using internationalization in your own projects

===============================================

At runtime, Django builds an in-memory unified catalog of literals-translations.

To achieve this it looks for translations by following this algorithm regarding

the order in which it examines the different file paths to load the compiled

:term:`message files <message file>` (``.mo``) and the precedence of multiple

translations for the same literal:

1. The directories listed in :setting:`LOCALE_PATHS` have the highest

   precedence, with the ones appearing first having higher precedence than

   the ones appearing later.

2. Then, it looks for and uses if it exists a ``locale`` directory in each

   of the installed apps listed in :setting:`INSTALLED_APPS`.  The ones

   appearing first have higher precedence than the ones appearing later.

3. Then, it looks for a ``locale`` directory in the project directory, or

   more accurately, in the directory containing your settings file.

4. Finally, the Django-provided base translation in ``django/conf/locale``

   is used as a fallback.

.. deprecated:: 1.3

    Lookup in the ``locale`` subdirectory of the directory containing your

    settings file (item 3 above) is deprecated since the 1.3 release and will be

    removed in Django 1.5. You can use the :setting:`LOCALE_PATHS` setting

    instead, by listing the absolute filesystem path of such ``locale``

    directory in the setting value.

.. seealso::

    The translations for literals included in JavaScript assets are looked up

    following a similar but not identical algorithm. See the

    :ref:`javascript_catalog view documentation <javascript_catalog-view>` for

    more details.

In all cases the name of the directory containing the translation is expected to

be named using :term:`locale name` notation. E.g. ``de``, ``pt_BR``, ``es_AR``,

etc.

This way, you can write applications that include their own translations, and

you can override base translations in your project path. Or, you can just build

a big project out of several apps and put all translations into one big common

message file specific to the project you are composing. The choice is yours.

.. note::

    If you're using manually configured settings, as described in

    :ref:`settings-without-django-settings-module`, the ``locale`` directory in

    the project directory will not be examined, since Django loses the ability

    to work out the location of the project directory. (Django normally uses the

    location of the settings file to determine this, and a settings file doesn't

    exist if you're manually configuring your settings.)

All message file repositories are structured the same way. They are:

* All paths listed in :setting:`LOCALE_PATHS` in your settings file are

  searched for ``<language>/LC_MESSAGES/django.(po|mo)``

* ``$PROJECTPATH/locale/<language>/LC_MESSAGES/django.(po|mo)`` --

  deprecated, see above.

* ``$APPPATH/locale/<language>/LC_MESSAGES/django.(po|mo)``

* ``$PYTHONPATH/django/conf/locale/<language>/LC_MESSAGES/django.(po|mo)``

To create message files, you use the :djadmin:`django-admin.py makemessages <makemessages>`

tool. You only need to be in the same directory where the ``locale/`` directory

is located. And you use :djadmin:`django-admin.py compilemessages <compilemessages>`

to produce the binary ``.mo`` files that are used by ``gettext``. Read the

:doc:`/topics/i18n/localization` document for more details.

You can also run ``django-admin.py compilemessages --settings=path.to.settings``

to make the compiler process all the directories in your :setting:`LOCALE_PATHS`

setting.

Finally, you should give some thought to the structure of your translation

files. If your applications need to be delivered to other users and will

be used in other projects, you might want to use app-specific translations.

But using app-specific translations and project-specific translations could

produce weird problems with ``makemessages``: It will traverse all directories

below the current path and so might put message IDs into a unified, common

message file for the current project that are already in application message

files.

The easiest way out is to store applications that are not part of the project

(and so carry their own translations) outside the project tree. That way,

``django-admin.py makemessages``, when ran on a project level will only extract

strings that are connected to your explicit project and not strings that are

distributed independently.

Using translations outside views and templates

==============================================

While Django provides a rich set of i18n tools for use in views and templates,

it does not restrict the usage to Django-specific code. The Django translation

mechanisms can be used to translate arbitrary texts to any language that is

supported by Django (as long as an appropriate translation catalog exists, of

course). You can load a translation catalog, activate it and translate text to

language of your choice, but remember to switch back to original language, as

activating a translation catalog is done on per-thread basis and such change

will affect code running in the same thread.

For example::

    from django.utils import translation

    def welcome_translated(language):

        cur_language = translation.get_language()

        try:

            translation.activate(language)

            text = translation.ugettext('welcome')

        finally:

            translation.activate(cur_language)

        return text

Calling this function with the value 'de' will give you ``"Willkommen"``,

regardless of :setting:`LANGUAGE_CODE` and language set by middleware.

Functions of particular interest are ``django.utils.translation.get_language()``

which returns the language used in the current thread,

``django.utils.translation.activate()`` which activates a translation catalog

for the current thread, and ``django.utils.translation.check_for_language()``

which checks if the given language is supported by Django.

   deployment/index

   error-reporting

   initial-data

   i18n

   jython

   legacy-databases

   outputting-csv

   triaging-tickets

   writing-code/index

   writing-documentation

   translations

   localizing

   committing-code

.. _django-users: http://groups.google.com/group/django-users

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Submitting and maintaining translations

=======================================

=================

Localizing Django

=================

Various parts of Django, such as the admin site and validation error messages,

are internationalized. This means they display different text depending on each

user's language setting. For this, Django uses the same internationalization and

localization infrastructure available to Django applications, described in the

:doc:`i18n documentation</topics/i18n/index>`.

are internationalized. This means they display differently depending on each

user's language or country. For this, Django uses the same internationalization

and localization infrastructure available to Django applications, described in

the :doc:`i18n documentation </topics/i18n/index>`.

Internationalization

--------------------

Translations

------------

Translations are contributed by Django users worldwide. The translation work is

coordinated at `Transifex`_.

     For more information about how to use Transifex, read the

     `Transifex User Guide`_.

Localization

------------

Formats

-------

You can also review ``conf/locale/<locale>/formats.py``. This file describes

the date, time and numbers formatting particularities of your locale. See

texts to be translated, like form fields error messages, you must include

:mod:`django.contrib.localflavor` in the :setting:`INSTALLED_APPS` setting, so

the internationalization system can find the catalog, as explained in

:ref:`using-translations-in-your-own-projects`.

:ref:`how-django-discovers-translations`.

Adding flavors

==============