Some questions about Django localisation

Question

I intend to localise my Django application and began reading up on localisation on the Django site. This put a few questions in my mind:

1. It seems that when you run the 'django-admin.py makemessages' command, it scans the files for embedded strings and generates a message file that contains the translations. These translations are mapped to the strings in the file. For example, if I have a string in HTML that reads "Please enter the recipients name", Django would consider it to be the message id. What would happen if i changed something in the string. Let's say I added the missing apostrophe to the word "recipient". Would this break the translation?

2. In relation to the above scenario, Is it better to use full fledged sentences in the source (which might change) or would I be better off using a word like "RECIPIENT_NAME" which is less likely to change and easier to map to?

3. Does the 'django-admin.py makemessages' command scan the Python sources as well?

Thanks.

Answer 1

1. It very probably would, in some cases 'similar' strings can be detected and your translation will be marked with fuzzy. But it depends on the type of string, I don't know what adding an apostrophe would do. Read the GNU gettext docs for more information about this. However, an easy solution for your problem would be: don't fix the typo in the original, but make a translation like english to english where the translated string is the correct one :). I personally wouldn't recommend this approach, but If you're afraid to break tens of translation files, it can be considered.

2. No it isn't, it throws away all sense of context. It might look clearer for sites where only a few translation strings are required and you know the exact context by heart. But as soon as you have 100s of strings in the translation file, short names like that will say nothing, you'll always have to look up the exact context. Even worse, it can be you use the same 'short name' for something that actually has to be translated differently, which will end up giving you weirder short names to handle both cases. Finally, if you use one normal language as default, you don't need to translate this language explicitly anymore.

3. Yes it does, there exist multiple functions to mark strings in python for translation, an overview can be found here.