Flask Babel - 'translations/de/LC_MESSAGES/messages.po' is marked as fuzzy, skipping

Question

I cant get a basic translationto work in Flask Babel.

Here are my steps.

1. I have this in a page {{_("Hello")}}

2. I run this command.

   pybabel extract -F babel.cfg -o messages.pot .
   

3. I then run this command for German.

   pybabel init -i messages.pot -d translations -l de
   

4. Here is the mo file for german in /app/translations/de/LC_MESSAGES/messages.po

   # German translations for PROJECT.
   # Copyright (C) 2012 ORGANIZATION
   # This file is distributed under the same license as the PROJECT project.
   # FIRST AUTHOR <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, 2012.
   #
   #, fuzzy
   msgid ""
   msgstr ""
   "Project-Id-Version: PROJECT VERSION\n"
   "Report-Msgid-Bugs-To: EMAIL@ADDRESS\n"
   "POT-Creation-Date: 2012-09-24 03:36+0800\n"
   "PO-Revision-Date: 2012-09-24 03:37+0800\n"
   "Last-Translator: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>\n"
   "Language-Team: de <[email protected]>\n"
   "Plural-Forms: nplurals=2; plural=(n != 1)\n"
   "MIME-Version: 1.0\n"
   "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8\n"
   "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n"
   "Generated-By: Babel 0.9.6\n"
   
   #: templates/baseh5.html:129
   msgid "Hello"
   msgstr "Guten Tag"
   

5. I run this command.

   pybabel compile -d translations
   

   This is what I get.

   catalog 'translations/de/LC_MESSAGES/messages.po' is marked as fuzzy, skipping
   

6. set this is flask

   app.config['BABEL_DEFAULT_LOCALE'] = 'de'
   

What do I get? I get Hello. Why did Flask Babel not work? How do I deal with fuzzy? This should have been basic.

Answer 1

You can force pybabel compile to compile messages marked as fuzzy with the -f (or --use-fuzzy) command line switch:

pybabel compile -f -d translations

'Fuzzy' messages are marked with a #, fuzzy line above the msgid line, and are the result of a merge where a message is deemed slightly changed from the previous version. A message marked as fuzzy is supposed to be looked at by a human to make sure the translation doesn't need updating, after which the human translator removes that flag.

Answer 2

As pybabel said: The catalog itself was marked as "fuzzy" (6th line). If you remove that line, you don't need the 'force' option.