How to translate pygtk; glade; gtk.Builder() application?

Question

This is my first trial in translating pygtk glade; I have created Rockdome.mo file on the following dir:./locale/ar/LC_MESSAGES/Rockdome.mo

    def apply_locale(self , lang):
         domain  = "Rockdome"
         local_path = basefolder+"/locale"   # basefolder is the current dir
         lang = gettext.translation('Rockdome', local_path ,  languages=['%s'%lang])
         lang.install()
         _ = lang.gettext
         print _("Close") # the output is اغلاق which is correct arabic translation!!

but the application still appear in the default system lamnguage EN; What I missing ??

EDIT

After searching in pygtk and buider tutoial; I found 2 methods to tell gtk & builder How to bring text : the first from here :

 for module in (gettext, gtk.glade):
     module.bindtextdomain(APP_NAME, LOCALE_DIR)
     module.textdomain(APP_NAME)       

which fail.

---

The second from here

 self.builder.set_translation_domain('Rockdome')
 print self.builder.get_translation_domain() # the output is "Rockdome"

which also fail !!, the application still untranslated !!

N.B: I guess that builder needs to know the location for my local path to search in it not in the default paths so I copied ./local/ar/LC_MESSAGES/Rockdome.mo to /usr/share/locale/ar/LC_MESSAGES/Rockdome.mo which also failed.

Answer 1

the following method works succefully with me >

1. use locale module not gettext.
2. execute locale.setlocale(category , language )
3. Set the translation_domain of gtk.Builder by gtk.Builder.set_translation_domain() before loading glade file by : EX:gtk.Builder.add_from_file

Code ##

    import locale
    from locale import gettext as _

    def apply_locale(self , current_lang ):
        domain  = "Rockdome"
        local_path = basefolder+"/data/locale"
        locale.bindtextdomain(domain , local_path )
        locale.textdomain(domain)
        locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, 'ar_AE.utf8')   
        # note that language is "ar_AE.utf8" not "ar" or "ar_AE"
        self.builder.set_translation_domain(domain )

---

Why we should replace gettext with locale

Thanks to Juha Sahakangas on the #gtk+ IRC channel for providing the explanation: For this particular case the locale module needs to be used instead of gettext. Python's gettext module is pure python, it doesn't actually set the text domain in a way that the C library can read, but locale does (by calling libc). So long as that's done, GtkBuilder already works the way you're asking it to.

---

Notes

to avoid locale.Error: unsupported locale setting

1. In the function locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, language ); language should be one the supported languages.

2. to get list of supported languages; locale -a command.

3. The name of the language should be equal to its name in the output of the command locale -a; ie. don't strip the encode if it included in the language name, ie:. ar_AE.utf8 doesn't equal to ar_AE.

4. If the language doesn't supported; we can install it.

5. To install unsupported language:

sudo apt-get install language-pack-en-base

sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

Thanks for this links

how to make glade load translation

locale error : unsupported locale setting

locale module doc

install unsupported locale