Question

We internationalized our site months ago, but forgot one part: The drop down where a user picks their timezone.

How do you translate the following line:

  = f.time_zone_select :timezone, ActiveSupport::TimeZone.all

Answer 1

I’ve come across the same problem. However, when I was trying to implement Peter’s solution, a simpler solution occurred to me. The time_zone_select helper takes a :model option, which defaults to ActiveSupport::TimeZone. According to the API documentation, all this model has to do is return an array of timezone objects in the all method. We can then override the to_s method to return the translation (defaulting to the original if the translation isn’t found). Here is the class:

# lib/i18n_time_zone.rb
class I18nTimeZone < ActiveSupport::TimeZone
  def self.all
    super.map { |z| create(z.name, z.utc_offset) }
  end

  def to_s
    translated_name = I18n.t(name, :scope => :timezones, :default => name)
    "(GMT#{formatted_offset}) #{translated_name}"
  end
end

And in the view:

<%= time_zone_select :user, :time_zone, nil, :model => I18nTimeZone %>

With the translations specified in the translation file as before:

# es.yml
es:
  timezones:
    "International Date Line West":    "Línea de fecha internacional del oeste"
    "Pacific Time (US & Canada)":      "Tiempo pacífico (& de los E.E.U.U.; Canadá)"
    # and so on