The gettext module defines the following API, which is very similar to the GNU gettext API. If you use this API you will affect the translation of your entire application globally. Often this is what you want if your application is monolingual, with the choice of language dependent on the locale of your user. If you are localizing a Python module, or if your application needs to switch languages on the fly, you probably want to use the class-based API instead.
domain[, localedir]) |
If localedir is omitted or None
, then the current binding
for domain is returned.6.2
domain[, codeset]) |
New in version 2.4.
[domain]) |
None
, then the current global domain is returned, otherwise the
global domain is set to domain, which is returned.
message) |
message) |
New in version 2.4.
domain, message) |
domain, message) |
New in version 2.4.
singular, plural, n) |
Like gettext(), but consider plural forms. If a translation is found, apply the plural formula to n, and return the resulting message (some languages have more than two plural forms). If no translation is found, return singular if n is 1; return plural otherwise.
The Plural formula is taken from the catalog header. It is a C or Python expression that has a free variable n; the expression evaluates to the index of the plural in the catalog. See the GNU gettext documentation for the precise syntax to be used in .po files, and the formulas for a variety of languages.
New in version 2.3.
singular, plural, n) |
New in version 2.4.
domain, singular, plural, n) |
New in version 2.3.
domain, singular, plural, n) |
New in version 2.4.
Note that GNU gettext also defines a dcgettext() method, but this was deemed not useful and so it is currently unimplemented.
Here's an example of typical usage for this API:
import gettext gettext.bindtextdomain('myapplication', '/path/to/my/language/directory') gettext.textdomain('myapplication') _ = gettext.gettext # ... print _('This is a translatable string.')
sys.prefix
/share/locale.
For this reason, it is always best to call
bindtextdomain() with an explicit absolute path at
the start of your application.