Gengo releases Avalon, a Python localization/translation utility for App Engine

[Brian McConnell]

Hello everyone,

We're at OSCON this year to announce several new translation and localization tools for popular open source platforms and development environments, including Python. This week, we're releasing Avalon, a gettext-like utility that requests translations from machine and human translation APIs. Think of it as gettext for the cloud. With it, localizing your app or translating your content is as simple as:

sl = 'en'
tl = 'es'
translation_order = ['gengo', 'google']

self.response.out.write(_("Hello World!"))

The utility, along with a helpful how-to article that explains how to duplicate it in other environments, is at mygengo.github.com/avalon It currently works with Google Translate and Gengo's human translation API. We'll be adding support for Transifex (a hosted translation and localization management service) in the near future as well. (If you need a good localization solution for your projects, definitely check out Transifex).

The utility implements a simple _() function which you use to request a translation for a string, but instead of consulting a static file with a prompt catalog (PO file), it does the following:

* checks memcache to see if there's a cached translation
* calls out to Gengo and/or Google to request a translation via an API call

The how-to article explains strategies for mimicking the utility in the development environment or framework of your choice. So check it out, and if you have suggestions, feedback or would like to contribute code, drop me a line.

Thanks!

Brian McConnell
Head of API Integration
Gengo Inc