README.md

Extension of Python Gettext that gives the power to describe and use conjunctions to translators.

It makes gettext() function return object which behave as string with translation, except you can access context translations through its attributes.

Let's say your translation file looks as below:

msgid "user"
msgstr "użytkownik"

msgctxt "accusative"
msgid "user"
msgstr "użytkownika"

With AttributiveTranslation class you can access accusative context translation through attribute of no-context translation:

>>> user = AttributiveTranslations(…).gettext('user')
>>> user
'użytkownik'
>>> user.accusative
'użytkownika'

"OK, and what's cool about that?"

Format string syntax introduced in Python 3 allows accessing arguments' attributes in format strings. Therefore following is possible:

>>> 'Wybierz {name.accusative} do zmiany'.format(name=user)
'Wybierz użytkownika do zmiany'

We are able to parametrize translation strings with e.g. nouns, which then can change grammatical cases in translation. Above example being a gettext translation:

msgid "Select {name} to change"
msgstr "Wybierz {name.accusative} do zmiany"

Some of the languages that use grammatical cases for nouns are: Armenian, Assamese, most Balto-Slavic languages, Basque, most Caucasian languages, most Dravidian languages, German, Icelandic, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Sanskrit, Tibetan, the Turkic languages and the Uralic languages.

Fallback

OK, but let's say we miss a context translation:

msgid "user"
msgstr "użytkownik"

msgctxt "accusative"
msgid "user"
msgstr ""  # <-- missing translation

AttributiveTranslation class by default falls back to no-context translation of the original English string:

>>> user = AttributiveTranslations(…).gettext('user')
>>> 'Wybierz {name.accusative} do zmiany'.format(name=user)
'Wybierz użytkownik do zmiany'

Example installation

from gettext import translation
from translations import AttributiveTranslations

pl = translation('messages', 'locale', ['pl'], AttributiveTranslations)
pl.install(('pgettext',))

Example usage

Code (installation of translation omitted):

user = _('user')
group = _('group')

selected = []

for o in (user, group):
    print(_('Select {name} to change').format(name=o))
    selected.append(input(f'{o.title()}: '))

With translation file:

msgid "user"
msgstr "użytkownik"

msgctxt "accusative"
msgid "user"
msgstr "użytkownika"

msgid "group"
msgstr "grupa"

msgctxt "accusative"
msgid "group"
msgstr "grupę"

msgid "Select {name} to change"
msgstr "Wybierz {name.accusative} do zmiany"

Will produce:

Wybierz użytkownika do zmiany
Użytkownik: …
Wybierz grupę do zmiany
Grupa: …