Question

Django’s internationalization is very nice (gettext based, LocaleMiddleware), but what is the proper way to translate the model name and the attributes for admin pages? I did not find anything about this in the documentation:

• http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/i18n/internationalization/
• http://www.djangobook.com/en/2.0/chapter19/

I would like to have "Выберите заказ для изменения" instead of "Выберите order для изменения". Note, the ‘order’ is not translated.

First, I defined a model, activated USE_I18N = True in settings.py, run django-admin makemessages -l ru. No entries are created by default for model names and attributes.

Grepping in the Django source code I found:

$ ack "Select %s to change"
contrib/admin/views/main.py
70:        self.title = (self.is_popup and ugettext('Select %s') % force_unicode(self.opts.verbose_name) or ugettext('Select %s to change') % force_unicode(self.opts.verbose_name))

So the verbose_name meta property seems to play some role here. Tried to use it:

class Order(models.Model):
    subject = models.CharField(max_length=150)
    description = models.TextField()
    class Meta:
        verbose_name = _('order')

Now the updated po file contains msgid 'order' that can be translated. So I put the translation in. Unfortunately running the admin pages show the same mix of "Выберите order для изменения".

I’m currently using Django 1.1.1.
Could somebody point me to the relevant documentation? Because google can not. 😉 In the mean time I’ll dig deeper into the django source code…

Answer 1

Important things not mentioned in the Django documentation:

• run django-admin compilemessages, e.g. as a part of your build
  process. Thanks stevejalim!
• apply django’s ugettext_lazy() to model names ( Meta class and verbose_name )
• attribute (model field verbose_name) names can also be translated with ugettext_lazy()
• use lazy translation in your model metadata, otherwise the translation
  happens while loading the model classes and the settings of your users,
  especially the browser settings, will not be taken into account
• I use some scoping for attribute names, e.g. separating the model name
  and attribute names with a pipe. The same convention is used in
  ruby-gettext. Background: attribute names like ‘title’ or ‘name’ translated
  differently in the most languages depending on context. Example
  ‘Book|title’ -> ‘Titel’ or ‘Buchtitel’ in German. But
  ‘Chapter|title’ would be translated as ‘Überschrift’.

Example using above principles:

from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _
class Order(models.Model):
    subject = models.CharField(max_length=150, verbose_name = _('Order|subject'))
    description = models.TextField(            verbose_name = _('Order|description'))
    class Meta:
        verbose_name = _('order')
        verbose_name_plural = _('orders')

Or is there a better way to translate the model and admin pages?

Either way we should enhance the Django documentation and fill the gap!