Commit f6fefbf8 authored by Claude Paroz's avatar Claude Paroz
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Fixed #26337 -- Added i18n note about using a non-English base language

Thanks Cristiano Coelho for the report and Tim Graham for the review.
parent 08014fe7
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Original line number Diff line number Diff line
@@ -2196,3 +2196,21 @@ to produce the binary ``.mo`` files that are used by ``gettext``.
You can also run :djadmin:`django-admin compilemessages
--settings=path.to.settings <compilemessages>` to make the compiler process all
the directories in your :setting:`LOCALE_PATHS` setting.

Using a non-English base language
---------------------------------

Django makes the general assumption that the original strings in a translatable
project are written in English. You can choose another language, but you must be
aware of certain limitations:

* ``gettext`` only provides two plural forms for the original messages, so you
  will also need to provide a translation for the base language to include all
  plural forms if the plural rules for the base language are different from
  English.

* When an English variant is activated and English strings are missing, the
  fallback language will not be the :setting:`LANGUAGE_CODE` of the project,
  but the original strings. For example, an English user visiting a site with
  Spanish as the default language and original strings written in Russian will
  fallback to Russian, not to Spanish.