Detecting user language with Django

Question

I'm looking for a way to detect user language. I set my default language as 'en_US', and I translated my site for 'pt_BR'. How can I switch the language and show 'pt_BR' version for Brazilians and 'en_US' for the rest of the world?

I read these documentation links:

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/http/sessions/

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.7/topics/i18n/translation/

I believe that maybe I'll have to take this information from user cookies or browser preferences, but how can I do this?

Furthermore, how can I test different languages? I have to change my browser language? OS language? Use a proxy?

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 10 '14 at 09:13

3

Every user's HTTP request contains in header parameter Accept-Language.

Example would be:

user_langs = request.META.get('HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE', ['en-US', ])

answered Oct 10 '14 at 09:13

gcerar

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Is there a middleware or settings option to apply this header to the response language automatically? – Mohammad Jafar Mashhadi Aug 22 '17 at 07:28
Let's say that my answer is obsolete. Django has introduced ``LocaleMiddleware``, which dynamically determines the proper language of a user. Notice, that there are always some edge cases. For further information please refer to [Django's i18n page](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.11/topics/i18n/) and [How Django discovers language preference](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.11/topics/i18n/translation/#how-django-discovers-language-preference) – gcerar Aug 22 '17 at 08:28

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 10 '14 at 07:35

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Try to add navigator.language to your post data and resolve it in your view.

http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/prop_nav_language.asp

answered Oct 10 '14 at 07:35

obayhan

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 14 '23 at 09:37

Django detects which language it should use based on the browser settings. So changing your browser language will allow you to test.

If you set 'en_US' as default language, it will work. For more information, see: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.2/topics/i18n/translation/#how-django-discovers-language-preference

Detecting user language with Django

3 Answers3