Management Commands

django-localekit provides four management commands that handle the full translation lifecycle — from exporting DB content to .po files, importing translated files back, converting existing locale files, and running automatic machine translation.

Locale Kit .po file format

All django-localekit .po files use a special translator comment (the # line before each entry) to link a msgid back to the exact model instance and field that owns it:

#  <model_name>__<field_name>__<object_pk>

For example, if an Article with pk=42 has the field title, its entry looks like:

#  article__title__42
msgid "Hello World"
msgstr ""

This comment is how dlk_update_database knows which Translation row to create or update when it imports a file.

---

dlk_makemessages

Reads all Translation rows from the database and writes django-localekit-format .po files — one per configured language — into DLK_LOCALE_PATH.

When to use: after manually creating or editing translations in the admin, to export them as .po files for a translation agency or for backup.

python manage.py dlk_makemessages

Option	Default	Description
--language	all languages	Only generate the .po file for this language code

Generate only the Spanish file:

python manage.py dlk_makemessages --language=es

Generated file — dlk_locale/es/LC_MESSAGES/django.po:

# SOME DESCRIPTIVE TITLE.
# Copyright (C) YEAR THE PACKAGE'S COPYRIGHT HOLDER
# LANGUAGE TEAM <EMAIL>
#
msgid ""
msgstr ""
"Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\n"
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n"

#  article__title__42
msgid "Hello World"
msgstr "Hola Mundo"

#  article__body__42
#, fuzzy
msgid "A sample article."
msgstr ""

#  article__title__43
msgid "Quick Start Guide"
msgstr "Guía de Inicio Rápido"

Note

Entries with an empty msgstr receive a fuzzy flag automatically, signalling to translators that the string is untranslated.

---

dlk_update_database

Reads django-localekit .po files from DLK_LOCALE_PATH and imports each valid entry into the Translation table.

When to use: after a translator returns the completed .po files, to load the translations into the database.

python manage.py dlk_update_database

Skip logic:

• The default language (LANGUAGE_CODE) is always skipped — it is the source, not a translation.
• A language is skipped if its .po file does not exist yet.
• A language is skipped if its .po file is older than the most recent Translation.updated_at for that language, preventing accidental overwrites.

Input file — dlk_locale/es/LC_MESSAGES/django.po:

#  article__title__42
msgid "Hello World"
msgstr "Hola Mundo"

#  article__body__42
msgid "A sample article."
msgstr "Un artículo de ejemplo."

After the command runs, two Translation rows exist for article pk=42 in Spanish.

---

dlk_convert_locales

Converts a standard Django .po file (produced by makemessages) into django-localekit format by matching each msgid against translatable model instances in the database.

When to use: when you already have translated .po files from a regular Django gettext workflow and want to import them into the database-backed system.

python manage.py dlk_convert_locales --locale locale

Option	Required	Description
--locale	Yes	Name of the folder under BASE_DIR containing the source .po files (e.g. locale)
--remove-used	No	Remove matched entries from the source .po file after they have been written to the output file

Input — locale/es/LC_MESSAGES/django.po:

msgid "Hello World"
msgstr "Hola Mundo"

msgid "A sample article."
msgstr "Un artículo de ejemplo."

msgid "This string has no matching model object."
msgstr "Esta cadena no tiene objeto de modelo coincidente."

Output — dlk_locale/es/LC_MESSAGES/django.po:

#  article__title__42
msgid "Hello World"
msgstr "Hola Mundo"

#  article__body__42
msgid "A sample article."
msgstr "Un artículo de ejemplo."

Only entries whose msgid matches a value in a translatable model field are written to the output file. The unmatched entry ("This string has no matching model object.") is silently ignored.

With --remove-used, the two matched entries are also removed from the source locale/es/LC_MESSAGES/django.po, leaving only the unmatched one.

---

dlk_translate_models

Automatically translates empty translation fields (or all fields with --all) using a configured translation provider.

When to use: to populate translations in bulk without a human translator, using machine translation or an AI language model.

python manage.py dlk_translate_models --language=es --provider=google_v3

Option	Default	Description
--language	required	Target language code (e.g. es, fr)
--provider	required	Provider name (e.g. google_v2, google_v3, aws, deepl, or a custom name)
--target_language	same as --language	Provider-side language code when it differs from LANGUAGES (e.g. pt-BR vs pt)
--all	false	Translate even fields that already have a translation
--workers	4	Number of parallel worker threads
--without_batch	false	Send one string per request instead of batching

Translate only empty fields to Spanish:

python manage.py dlk_translate_models --language=es --provider=google_v3

Re-translate everything to French (overwrite):

python manage.py dlk_translate_models --language=fr --provider=deepl --all

Use a provider whose internal language code differs (e.g. Brazilian Portuguese):

python manage.py dlk_translate_models --language=pt --target_language=pt-BR --provider=deepl

See Translation Providers for how to configure built-in providers and how to write a custom one.