How to override the django admin translation

Question

I'm trying to override the default translations of Django's admin site.

I'm using Django 1.6. My settings.py contains:

import os
BASE_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(__file__))

# ...

LANGUAGE_CODE = 'nl'
USE_I18N = True
USE_L10N = True
LOCALE_PATHS = (os.path.join(BASE_DIR, "locale"),)

I have copied the file django/contrib/admin/locale/nl/LC_MESSAGES/django.po to my_project/locale/nl/LC_MESSAGES/django.po and I've made some changes to it.

Next, I have run python manage.py compilemessages and python manage.py runserver.

When I visit localhost:8000/admin, however, I'm still seeing Django's default admin translations. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Hello @kartik,

Just as you can override a Django-provided admin template by duplicating the template's name and directory structure within our own project, you can override Django-provided admin translations by duplicating a .po file's name and directory structure within our project.

Django's admin translations live in django/contrib/admin/locale/ and are organized by language in directories named [language code]/LC_MESSAGES/. These individual language directories contain two .po files, django.po and djangojs.po, and their respective compiled .mo files. You will be overriding the .po files, and compiling our own .mo files.

The first thing you have to do is enable translations in settings, and tell Django where you store our translation files.

settings.py

import os
BASE_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(__file__))

# ...

LANGUAGE_CODE = 'nl-NL'
USE_I18N = True
USE_L10N = True
LOCALE_PATHS = (os.path.join(BASE_DIR, "locale"),)  

Hope this works!!

Thanks!!