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<title>6.28.3.4 Deferred translations
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<H3><A NAME=
"SECTION0082834000000000000000">
6.28.3.4 Deferred translations
</A>
In most coding situations, strings are translated where they are coded.
Occasionally however, you need to mark strings for translation, but
defer actual translation until later. A classic example is:
<div class=
"verbatim"><pre>
Here, you want to mark the strings in the
<code>animals
</code> list as being
translatable, but you don't actually want to translate them until they
Here is one way you can handle this situation:
<div class=
"verbatim"><pre>
def _(message): return message
This works because the dummy definition of
<tt class=
"function">_()
</tt> simply returns
the string unchanged. And this dummy definition will temporarily
override any definition of
<tt class=
"function">_()
</tt> in the built-in namespace
(until the
<tt class=
"keyword">del
</tt> command).
Take care, though if you have a previous definition of
<tt class=
"function">_
</tt> in
Note that the second use of
<tt class=
"function">_()
</tt> will not identify ``a'' as
being translatable to the
<b class=
"program">pygettext
</b> program, since it is not
Another way to handle this is with the following example:
<div class=
"verbatim"><pre>
def N_(message): return message
animals = [N_('mollusk'),
In this case, you are marking translatable strings with the function
<tt class=
"function">N_()
</tt>,
<A NAME=
"tex2html47"
HREF=
"#foot36714"><SUP>6.6</SUP></A> which won't conflict with any definition of
<tt class=
"function">_()
</tt>. However, you will need to teach your message extraction
program to look for translatable strings marked with
<tt class=
"function">N_()
</tt>.
<b class=
"program">pygettext
</b> and
<b class=
"program">xpot
</b> both support this through the
use of command line switches.
<BR><HR><H4>Footnotes
</H4>
<DT><A NAME=
"foot36714">...N_(),
</A><A
HREF=
"node337.html#tex2html47"><SUP>6.6</SUP></A></DT>
<DD>The choice of
<tt class=
"function">N_()
</tt> here is totally
arbitrary; it could have just as easily been
<tt class=
"function">MarkThisStringForTranslation()
</tt>.
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<span class=
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2005.
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