How can I18n be used in Action::View::Helpers without Rails

Question

Given the code below, how could I use the I18n lib to get the result back in an other language than English?

require 'action_view' 
include ActionView::Helpers::DateHelper


t_0 = Time.now 
span = 1.week 
puts "Now: #{ t_0 } (#{t_0.to_f})" 
puts distance_of_time_in_words_to_now Time.at( t_0 + rand( span ) )