How can I map non-English Windows timezone names to Olsen names in Python?

Question

If I call win32timezone.TimeZoneInfo.local().timeZoneName, it gives me the time zone name in the current locale (for example, on a Japanese machine, it returns u"東京 (標準時)").

I would like to map this name to an Olsen database timezone name for use with pytz. CLDR windowZones.xml helps me to map English names, but can't handle the Japanese name.

How can I convert the name back to English (it should be Tokyo Standard Time in this case)?

Answer 1

dict(win32timezone.TimeZoneInfo._get_indexed_time_zone_keys()) returns exactly the mapping I need from the current locale's name to the English name. The following code solves it:

  import win32timezone
  win32tz_name = win32timezone.TimeZoneInfo.local().timeZoneName
  win32timezone_to_en = dict(win32timezone.TimeZoneInfo._get_indexed_time_zone_keys())
  win32timezone_name_en = win32timezone_to_en.get(win32tz_name, win32tz_name)
  olsen_name = win32timezones.get(win32timezone_name_en, None)
  if not olsen_name:
      raise ValueError(u"Could not map win32 timezone name %s (English %s) to Olsen timezone name" % (win32tz_name, win32timezone_name_en))
  return pytz.timezone(olsen_name)

It would be nice if this was accessible in the win32timezone.TimeZoneInfo object, though, instead of having to call a private method.