Localization

oTree’s participant interface has been translated to the following languages:

  • Chinese (simplified)
  • Dutch
  • French
  • German
  • Hungarian
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Norwegian
  • Russian
  • Spanish

This means that all built-in text that gets displayed to participants is available in these languages. This includes things like:

  • Form validation messages
  • Wait page messages
  • Dates, times and numbers (e.g. “1.5” vs “1,5”)

So, as long as you write your app’s text in one of these languages, all text that participants will see will be in that language. For more information, see the Django documentation on translation and format localization.

However, oTree’s admin/experimenter interface is currently only available in English, and the existing sample games have not been translated to any other languages.

Changing the language setting

Go to settings.py, change LANGUAGE_CODE, and restart the server.

For example:

LANGUAGE_CODE = 'fr' # French
LANGUAGE_CODE = 'zh-hans' # Chinese (simplified)

Writing your app in multiple languages

You may want your own app to work in multiple languages. For example, let’s say you want to run the same experiment with English, French, and Chinese participants.

For this, you can use Django’s translation system.

A quick summary:

  • Go to settings.py, change LANGUAGE_CODE, and restart the server. Examples:

    LANGUAGE_CODE = 'fr'
LANGUAGE_CODE = 'zh-hans'

  • Create a folder locale in each app you are translating, e.g. public_goods/locale. (If you forget to create this folder, the translations will go into your root directory’s locale folder.)

  • At the top of your templates, add {% load i18n %}. Then use {% blocktrans trimmed %}...{% endblocktrans %}. There are some things you can’t use inside a blocktrans, such as variables containing dots (e.g. {{ Constants.foo }}), or tags (e.g. {% if %}). More info here.

  • If you have localizable strings in your Python code, use ugettext.

  • Use makemessages to create the .po files in your app’s locale directory. Examples:

    django-admin makemessages -l fr
django-admin makemessages -l zh_Hans

  • Edit the .po file in Poedit

  • Run django-admin compilemessages to create .mo files next to your .po files. If it doesn’t work, try running the command inside the app directory containing the locale/ folder.

If you localize the files under _templates/global, you need to create a directory locale in the root of the project.

Volunteering to localize oTree

You are invited to contribute support for your own language in oTree.

It’s a simple task; you provide translations of about 20 English phrases. Currently we are only translating the participant interface, although we plan to translate the admin interface later.

Here is an example of an already completed translation to French. These files can be edited in Poedit.

Please contact chris@otree.org for more details.