Django Localization

Django's localization features provide a convenient way to retrieve strings in various languages, allowing you to easily support multiple languages within your application.

Introduction

Materialize uses Django's built in localization to provide a convenient way to retrieve strings in various languages, allowing you to easily support multiple languages within your application.

Language strings are stored in files within the /lang directory. Within this directory there should be a subdirectory for each language supported by the application:

Or, translation strings may be defined within PO files that are placed within the /locale directory. When taking this approach, each language supported by your application would have a corresponding PO file within this directory. This approach is recommended for application's that have a large number of translatable strings:

📂 locale
├── 📂 en
│   └──📂 LC_MESSAGES
│       └──📄 django.po
└── 📂 fr
    └──📂 LC_MESSAGES
        └──📄 django.po 

How to add a New Language?

To add support for a new language in your Django project:

1. Open your project's settings.py file.
2. Locate the LANGUAGES setting and add the desired language and locale code. For example:
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# Enable i18n and set the list of supported languages
LANGUAGES = [
  ("en", _("English")),
  ("fr", _("French")),
  ("ar", _("Arabic")),
  ("de", _("German")),
  # Add more languages as needed
]

• en is the language code.
• _("English") is the human-readable language name.
3. In your terminal, run the following command to generate the initial translation files (.po files) for your project:

Replace <locale_code> with the code for the new language (e.g., de for German).

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python manage.py makemessages -l <locale_code>

Info: msgid will be generated only from Django apps html files where we have used translate for ex: {% translate "Academy" %}
4. In the locale/<locale_code>/LC_MESSAGES/ directory, you'll find the .po file. Edit this file and provide translations for the strings marked with msgid.
5. After adding translations, compile all the .po file into a machine-readable .mo file by running:
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python manage.py compilemessages

To compile specific language

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python manage.py compilemessages -l <locale_code>

Note: When making messages from the template, be aware that Django will not consider words in the menu JSON file automatically. If making messages in the template provided language, remove the comment marks (#~) from the corresponding .po file, typically located at the bottom. Furthermore, if you've made changes to the menu JSON file and need translations for either the template's provided language or a new language, you'll need to manually update them in the .po file
6. At last add language to Navbar, language selection dropdown
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<!-- Language -->
<li class="nav-item dropdown-language dropdown me-2 me-xl-0">
    <a class="nav-link dropdown-toggle hide-arrow" href="javascript:void(0);" data-bs-toggle="dropdown">
    <i class='ri-translate-2 ri-22px'></i>
    </a>
    <ul class="dropdown-menu dropdown-menu-end">
        ...
        <li>
          <a class="dropdown-item {% if LANGUAGE_CODE == 'de' %}active{% endif %}" href="{% current_url request %}" data-language="de" data-text-direction="ltr">
            <span class="align-middle">{% trans "German"%}</span>
          </a>
        </li>
        ...
    </ul>
</li>
<!--/ Language -->

• data-language is the language code.
• data-text-direction specifies the language's text direction, allowing you to set text direction for a specific language.

How to remove existing language?

If you want to remove support for a language in your Django project:

1. Remove the language from the LANGUAGES setting in your settings.py file.
2. Delete the corresponding .po and .mo files for that language in the locale/<locale_code>/LC_MESSAGES/ directory.
3. Ensure that you update your views and templates to handle language fallbacks gracefully in case users have selected the removed language.

Remove language from language selection dropdown.

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<!-- Language -->
<li class="nav-item dropdown-language dropdown me-2 me-xl-0">
    <a class="nav-link dropdown-toggle hide-arrow" href="javascript:void(0);" data-bs-toggle="dropdown">
    <i class='ri-translate-2 ri-22px'></i>
    </a>
    <ul class="dropdown-menu dropdown-menu-end">
        ...
        <li>
          <a class="dropdown-item {% if LANGUAGE_CODE == 'de' %}active{% endif %}" href="{% current_url request %}" data-language="de" data-text-direction="ltr">
            <span class="align-middle">{% trans "German"%}</span>
          </a>
        </li>
        ...
    </ul>
</li>
<!--/ Language -->

4. Run python manage.py compilemessages to regenerate the compiled .mo files for the remaining languages.

Using Translations in Template HTML Files

Django provides a convenient way to translate text within HTML templates to support multiple languages. Here's how you can use translations in your template files:

• Loading the Translation Tags

Before using translation tags in your HTML templates, you need to load the {% load i18n %} tag at the top of your template. This tag loads the internationalization (i18n) template tags.

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{% load i18n %}

• Translating Text

To translate a piece of text, wrap it with the {% translate %} template tag. This tag marks the text for translation and will display the appropriate translation based on the user's selected language.

For example, to translate the text "Hello, World!" in your template:

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<p>{% translate "Hello, World!" %}</p>

Refer to the translate template tag

Localization In Template Customizer

We have also provided Localization in our Template Customizer. We have not handled Customizer's locale through Django but it is slightly interconnected.

When you change the template language using language dropdown from navbar. It'll also change the template customizer's language as per the selected language.

Internally, we have created a variable that is set as per the current Django language and sent this variable to our template-customizer.js file where we handle the customizer's localization.

Let's deep dive into it and understand how it works.

Internal variable to set Template Customizer's localization.

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<script>
window.templateCustomizer = new TemplateCustomizer({
lang: '{{LANGUAGE_CODE}}',
  ...
});
</script>

We have a javascript object of languages where you have to put your translation for customizer in template-customizer.js file.

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// Theme setting language
TemplateCustomizer.LANGUAGES = {
  en: {
    panel_header: 'TEMPLATE CUSTOMIZER',
    panel_sub_header: 'Customize and preview in real time',
    theming_header: 'THEMING',
    theme_header: 'THEME',
    theme_label: 'Themes',
    style_label: 'Style (Mode)',
    style_switch_light: 'Light',
    style_switch_dark: 'Dark',
    layout_header: 'LAYOUT',
    layout_label: 'Layout (Menu)',
    layout_static: 'Static',
    layout_offcanvas: 'Offcanvas',
    layout_fixed: 'Fixed',
    layout_fixed_offcanvas: 'Fixed offcanvas',
    layout_flipped_label: 'Menu flipped',
    layout_dd_open_label: 'Dropdown on hover',
    layout_navbar_label: 'Fixed navbar',
    layout_footer_label: 'Fixed footer',
    misc_header: 'MISC',
    rtl_label: 'RTL direction'
  },
  fr: {...},
  de: {...},
  ar: {...}
}

If you add or remove any language in Django then you have to add or remove the same language from the above Object. Otherwise, you'll get console errors.

If you don't want to use localization for customizer then you need to remove lang option from scripts_includes.html file:

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<script>
window.templateCustomizer = new TemplateCustomizer({
lang: '{{LANGUAGE_CODE}}',
  ...
});
</script>