Internationalization and localization

We are currently hosting all translations of Open edX framework on www.transifex.com. Please feel free to make translation contributions there.

You should also join the openedx-translation Google Group.

In order to run your Open edX instance under a different spoken language, for instance for Spanish (Latin American):

1. Configure your ~/.transifexrc file:

    [https://www.transifex.com]
    hostname = https://www.transifex.com
    username = user
    password = pass
    token =
   

   Token is left blank. You have to have permissions for the project (edx-platform) AFAIK - https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/edx-platform/

2. Switch to edxapp environment:

    sudo -H -u edxapp bash
    source /edx/app/edxapp/edxapp_env
    cd /edx/app/edxapp/edx-platform
   

3. All of the languages on Transifex are already configured in the edx-platform repo. If you've added a new language to Transifex, and we haven't added it to the configuration yet, you can add it to conf/locale/config.yaml.

4. Configure LANGUAGE_CODE in your lms/envs/common.py. Or, for development purposes, create a dev file called dev_LANGCODE.py - eg dev_es.py - with the following:

    from .dev import *
    
    USE_I18N = True
    LANGUAGES = ( ('es-419', 'Spanish'), )
    TIME_ZONE = 'America/Guayaquil'
    LANGUAGE_CODE = 'es-419'
   

Languages need to be specified with codes Django likes, so a code that is specific on Transifex such as "de_DE" must be specified as "de-de" in these configuration files. See https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/openedx-translation/vrOpMKzA0kU

5. Execute the following command in your edx-platform directory with your edx-platform virtualenv.

    $ paver i18n_robot_pull
   

Note that this command will pull reviewed translations for all languages that are listed in conf/locale/config.yaml. To only pull down some languages, edit conf/locale/config.yaml appropriately.

To pull unreviewed translations along with reviewed translations, edit /edx/app/edxapp/venvs/edxapp/src/i18n-tools/i18n/transifex.py. Particularly, the line execute('tx pull --mode=reviewed --all') should be changed to execute('tx pull --all')

6. When you launch your LMS instance you can launch it normally and things should display properly. However, if in Step 3 you created a special "dev_LANGUAGECODE" file, you'll need to launch the LMS with the environment file explicitly stated:

    $ paver lms -s dev_es -p 8000
   

7. If you experience issues:

   • Be sure your browser is set to prefer the language set in LANGUAGE_CODE
   • In common/djangoapps/student/views.py, the user's language code is tried to be obtained from a saved preferences file. So if you are having issues seeing your language served up, it may be because your User object has a different language saved as a preference. Try creating a new user in your environment, this should clear up the issue.