internationalization - Override default Django translations

Question

I have a template with this:

{% trans "Log out" %}

This is translated automatically by Django to Spanish as Terminar sesión. However I would like to translate it as Cerrar sesión.

I have tried to add this literal to the .po file, however I get an error saying this literal is duplicated when I compile the messages.

Is there a way to change/override default Django translations?

Thanks.

Answer 1

This is what worked for me:

• create a file in your app folder which will hold django messages for which translations need to be overridden, e.g. django_standard_messages.py

• in django lib folder or in django.po files find the message (string) that needs to be overridden, e.g. django.forms/fields.py has message _(u"This field is required.") which we want to translate to german differently

• in django_standard_messages.py add all such messages like this:

# coding: utf-8
_ = lambda s: s
django_standard_messages_to_override = [
_("This field is required."),
...
]

• Translate the file (makemessages, compilemessages) - makemessages will add added django standard messages in your application .po file, find them and translate, run compilemessages to update .mo file
• tryout

The logic behind: (I think ;) ) - when ugettext function searches translation for one message (string), there are several .po/.mo files that needs to be searched through. The first match is used. So, if our local app .po/.mo is first in that order, our translations will override all other (e.g. django default).

Alternative

When you need to translate all or most of django default messages, the other possibility (which I didn't tried) is to copy default django .po file in our locale or some other special folder, and fix translations and register the folder (if new) in LOCALE_PATHS django settings file as first entry in the list.

The logic behind: is the very similar as noted in previous section.