Localization: How to create language files

Once the string literals of an application have been tagged for later translation, the translation themselves need to be written (or obtained). Here's how that works.

Message files

The first step is to create a message file for a new language. A message file is a plain-text file, representing a single language, that contains all available translation strings and how they should be represented in the given language. Message files have a .po file extension.

Django comes with a tool, django-admin makemessages, that automates the creation and upkeep of these files.

The makemessages command (and compilemessages discussed later) use commands from the GNU gettext toolset: xgettext, msgfmt, msgmerge and msguniq

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