Localization

Changing the language setting

Go to your settings and change LANGUAGE_CODE:.

For example:

LANGUAGE_CODE = 'fr' # French
LANGUAGE_CODE = 'zh-hans' # Chinese (simplified)

This will customize certain things such validation messages and formatting of numbers.

Writing your app in multiple languages

You may want your own app to work in multiple languages. For example, let’s say you want to run the same experiment with English, French, and Chinese participants.

In your Python files, any strings that you want to be translated should be wrapped in gettext(). For example:

from gettext import gettext
msg = gettext('This string will be translated')

In your templates, any translatable strings should be inside a trans tag, for example:

{{ trans 'this is inside a trans tag' }}

(blocktrans is not supported. If you want to translate large sections of text, put them in separate includable templates and use an if statement to decide which language should be shown.)

Install Babel with pip install babel. Create babel.ini in your project root, containing:

[extractors]
otreetemplate = otree.api:extract_otreetemplate

[otreetemplate: **.html]
[python: **.py]

Now run this command:

pybabel extract . -F babel.ini -o messages.pot -k trans

This will create a messages.pot file with your translatable strings. Translate that using poedit.

Create the following folder:

_locale/fr/LC_MESSAGES/  # if french
_locale/zh_Hans/LC_MESSAGES/  # if chinese

Then create the .mo file:

pybabel compile -i messages.pot -d _locale -l fr -f

This will add a messages.mo to that folder. Now, change your project’s LANGUAGE_CODE, and your translated messages should appear.