Best practice: Django multilanguage

django, django-models, multilingual

Solution

For me, it all depends on the data the table is containing, There is no one size fits all.

For system tables (categories, field choices) I do one table different columns for different languages. Old but fine implementations is django-transmeta.

For tables with a lot of rows - table with common information and a table for translatable one. This way you can add languages on the fly - good for situations when you want to give users big choice of languages. Apparently I'm not sure there is good implementation of this approach. django-hvad is one implementation but it still beta and I personally don't like using it.

Here you can find more information about available plugins.

I can suggest following models.

class Book(models.Model):
    """Model for common book info"""
    created_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True, editable=False)
    #Other common fields


class BookTranslation(models.Model):
    """Model for translatable book info"""
    book = models.ForeignKey(Book, related_name="translations")
    language = models.CharField(max_length=2)
    name = models.CharField(max_length=255, unique=True)
    slug = models.SlugField(max_length=255, blank=True, default='')
    plot = models.TextField()
    created_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True, editable=False)


class Chapter(models.Model):
    """Model for common chapter info"""
    pub_date = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
    pages = models.SmallIntegerField()

    #I'll suggest such relation so you can get the chapters from book 
    #and book translation objects
    #related_name='+' means no related_name
    #You need to specify it when you have 2 FK to same model
    book = models.ForeignKey(Book, related_name='+')
    book_translation = models.ForeignKey(Book, related_name='chapters')


class ChapterTranslation(models.Model):
    """Model for translatable chapter info"""
    chapter = models.ForeignKey(Chapter, related_name="translations")
    language = models.CharField(max_length=2)
    title = models.CharField(max_length=255, blank=True)

In this case it is good that you get familiar with select-related and prefetch-related

In any case you need to build an abstraction on top so it will be comfortable to work with the structure.

Problem

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