I am using Python 3.5.2 and Django 1.10.
I have received the French translation .po file and can run the compilemessages command without receiving any errors.
However, when I run the site, many pages refuse to load.
I suspect that this is because the French translation .po file contains many single quotes (') in the translation strings.
For example,
#: .\core\constants\address_country_style_types.py:274
msgid "Ascension Island"
msgstr "Île de l'Ascension"
I remember reading somewhere (but cannot find that reference anywhere) that the single quotes must have either a forward or back slash before them. So I tried that, but when I ran the compilemessage command, I got an error message of:
C:\Users\me\desktop\myapp\myapp\locale\fr\LC_MESSAGES\django.po:423:18: invalid control sequence
So how do I escape the French single quote in strings issue?
here is the header of my French language .po file:
# SOME DESCRIPTIVE TITLE.
# Copyright (C) YEAR THE PACKAGE'S COPYRIGHT HOLDER
# This file is distributed under the same license as the PACKAGE package.
# FIRST AUTHOR <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR.
#
msgid ""
msgstr ""
"Project-Id-Version: PACKAGE VERSION\n"
"Report-Msgid-Bugs-To: \n"
"POT-Creation-Date: 2017-05-04 12:55+1000\n"
"PO-Revision-Date: YEAR-MO-DA HO:MI+ZONE\n"
"Last-Translator: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>\n"
"Language-Team: LANGUAGE <LL@li.org>\n"
"MIME-Version: 1.0\n"
"Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\n"
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n"
"Plural-Forms: nplurals=2; plural=(n > 1);\n"
I am unsure what is the cause of this issue (maybe that the translator somehow corrupted the file?).
However, a workaround is instead of using the standard single quotation mark ', I have used this single quotation mark (taken from symbols in MS Word):
′
I am yet to check this with the French translator, but it looks and works OK.
I hope this helps someone.