Translations

Adding translatable strings to the project

Please refer to Internationalization & Localization section in code style guide.

Translating

Adding translations in POEditor

Project’s translation files are synchronized with POEditor. JavaScript translation strings are stored in a separate project. You will need a POEditor account to edit translations and be added to translators@megit.com group.

New strings are automatically uploaded to POEditor every time an update is pushed to the master branch. Translations are downloaded several times a day with an automated sh/update-translations.sh script that downloads and validates the translations. Any errors interrupt the process and a notification is sent to translators@megit.com address with details. Translations will not synchronize again until all the issues are resolved.

Un-translatable terms

The following terms, when encountered within strings, should be left as-is and never translated:

Placeholders

These strings are important for correct working of the system, and should always be left as-is, including any words within the brackets.

{placeholder} - for example: {auditor}

{{placeholder}} - for example: {{auditor}}

%(placeholder)s - for example: %(auditor)s

%(placeholder)d - for example %(number)d

MEG-specific and product names

The specific terms listed below should never be translated

This list can be maintained in locale/notranslate.txt

MEG Docs
eGuides
MEG
HPSC
HSE
NHS
HIQA
MEG GEM

Using translations

GNU gettext is required to work with translations. Make sure to follow installation instruction specific to your operating system.

To run site with latest translations, compile the messages file:

./manage.py compilemessages

All strings displayed to the user should be translatable by using i18n tools provided by Django.

JavaScript translations

Translations used by front-end JavaScript code that cannot use strings rendered by template, are stored separately, as djangojs translations.

To use these translations you can call gettext and its variants within js code. These are typically available in all pages extending base.html template, but if you are working on a custom view, you need to add it separately, by adding {% js_catalog %} tag. The tag only needs to be included once on the page. Note that it replaces django’s built-in catalog!

{% js_catalog %}

<script>
    alert(gettext("Welcome!"));
</script>

Adding new language to the project

Add language to the system

To add support for a language, add it to settings.LANGUAGES. Language code should be lower case .
Add the language to the respective projects in POEditor
For some languages with a country code, it is necessary to edit poeditor.yaml for translations to save in a correct folder according to django specification

This adds a language option to the user / institution preferences. Some strings may already be translated if Django or 3rd party packages have these strings.

Add language to model translations

By default, model translations do not support all the project’s languages. There’s a separate setting settings.MODELTRANSLATION_LANGUAGES where support for individual langages can be added. The language must already be present in settings.LANGUAGES.

Note

Adding a language requires schema migrations for all translatable models.

To avoid migration conflicts, only add languages when translation is imminent.