Basic Translation

Let’s try to create a translation for our imaginable CMS from previous topic. First of all we need to create translatable object types.

from h10n import Translator


locales = {
    'en-US': {
        'object': {
            'article': u'Article',
            'comment': u'Comment',
        },
    },
}
t = Translator(locales=locales)

assert(t.translate('object:article', u'Article') == u'Article')
assert(t.translate('object:comment', u'Comment') == u'Comment')

At the moment, our application is something like traditional “Hello world” one. Firstly we defined available locales as tree of nested dictionaries. First level dictionary keys becomes locale names, second level ones – catalog names, third level ones – message names. Yes, h10n is able to store translation catalogs in files, and not only in files. But for our example will be more useful to define all directly in source code.

Than we created a Translator. See h10n.translator.Translator class for details.

And finally, we translated messages article and comment from catalog object. First argument of h10n.translator.Translator.translate() method is message full name, i.e. catalog name and message name separated by colon. Second one is fallback message, which should be used by translator on fail.

Just because we use single locale it implicitly became default and we don’t need to provide it explicitly before translation. But if we add another locale, we should do it. So, let’s add Russian one.

# coding: utf-8

from h10n import Translator


locales = {
    'en-US': {
        'object': {
            'article': u'Article',
            'comment': u'Comment',
        },
    },
    'ru-RU': {
        'object': {
            'article': u'Статья',
            'comment': u'Комментарий',
        },
    },
}
t = Translator(locales=locales, default='en-US')

assert(t.translate('object:article', u'Article') == u'Article')
assert(t.translate('object:comment', u'Comment') == u'Comment')

t.lang = 'ru'
assert(t.translate('object:article', u'Article') == u'Статья')
assert(t.translate('object:comment', u'Comment') == u'Комментарий')

Here, we added Russian locale, which is copy of English one. Also, we defined default locale explicitly as en-US. So, when we translate first pair of messages, it will be translated into English. Second pair will be translated into Russian, because we explicitly defined it, using lang property. There are country and locale ones also available, locale accepts full locale name, such as en-US, lang and country are shortcuts for first and second parts of this name.