How to add a custom language to Django
When working on my employer project (Corsair Explorer) we had the need to add a new language not currently supported by Django. We’re not providing full translation this language but we do need to provide it as an option for some content.
My typical layout for django projects is to have a main core app that houses 99% of the logic and code.
Although breaking up logic and models into apps is suggested it’s very, very rare i reuse an app in a different project so this gives the easiest development experience for me.
The below is part of the appy.py file inside the core app in the project.
# core/apps.py
from django.apps import AppConfig
from django.conf import settings
import django.conf.locale
class CoreConfig(AppConfig):
default_auto_field = "django.db.models.BigAutoField"
name = "core"
def ready(self):
django.conf.locale.LANG_INFO["mt"] = {
"bidi": False,
"code": "mt",
"name": "Maltese",
"name_local": "Malti",
}
It’s key that the django.conf.locale.LANG_INFO key matches up with the code value, in this case mt.
The other keys are for the following:
- bidi: languages that are essentially written and read from right-to-left.
- code: how the url will appear in the url. For example
https://example.come/mt/blog - name: The name of the language in english
- name_locale: The name of the language as written in the language
This can then be referenced in your settings.py as you’d normally do for a language
LANGUAGES = [
...
("mt", "Maltese"),
...
]