# 14.5 Multi-language support

In the chapter where we introduced internationalization and localization, we developed the `go-i18n` library. In this section, we will see how this library is integrated into the Beego framework, and how it enables our Beego applications to support both internationalization and localization. 

## I18n integration

Beego first sets some global variables:

	Translation i18n.IL
	Lang string // set the language pack, zh, en
	LangPath string // set the language pack location

A multi-language initialization function is defined:

	func InitLang(){
		beego.Translation:=i18n.NewLocale()
		beego.Translation.LoadPath(beego.LangPath)
		beego.Translation.SetLocale(beego.Lang)
	}

In order to facilitate multi-language calls in the template package directly, we designed three functions for handling multi-language responses:

	beegoTplFuncMap["Trans"] = i18n.I18nT
	beegoTplFuncMap["TransDate"] = i18n.I18nTimeDate
	beegoTplFuncMap["TransMoney"] = i18n.I18nMoney
	
	func I18nT(args ...interface{}) string {
	    ok := false
	    var s string
	    if len(args) == 1 {
	        s, ok = args[0].(string)
	    }
	    if !ok {
	        s = fmt.Sprint(args...)
	    }
	    return beego.Translation.Translate(s)
	}
	
	func I18nTimeDate(args ...interface{}) string {
	    ok := false
	    var s string
	    if len(args) == 1 {
	        s, ok = args[0].(string)
	    }
	    if !ok {
	        s = fmt.Sprint(args...)
	    }
	    return beego.Translation.Time(s)
	}	
	
	func I18nMoney(args ...interface{}) string {
	    ok := false
	    var s string
	    if len(args) == 1 {
	        s, ok = args[0].(string)
	    }
	    if !ok {
	        s = fmt.Sprint(args...)
	    }
	    return beego.Translation.Money(s)
	}

## Multi-language development

1. Setting the language and location of the language pack, then initialize i18n objects:

		beego.Lang = "zh"
		beego.LangPath = "views/lang"
		beego.InitLang()

2. Designing a multi-language package

  Above, we talked about how to initialize a multi-language package. Now, let's look at how to design one. Multi-language packages are typically JSON files, as you've already seen in Chapter 10. We must provide translation files for languages we wish to support on our `LangPath`, such as the following: 

		# zh.json
	
		{
		"zh": {
		    "submit": "提交",
		    "create": "创建"
		    }
		}
		
		# en.json
		
		{
		"en": {
		    "submit": "Submit",
		    "create": "Create"
		    }
		}

3. Using language packages

	We can call the controller to get the translated response in the desired language, like so::

		func (this *MainController) Get() {
			this.Data["create"] = beego.Translation.Translate("create")
			this.TplNames = "index.tpl"
		}

	We can also directly interpolate translated responses in our templates:

		// Direct Text translation
		{{.create | Trans}}

		// Time to translate
		{{.time | TransDate}}

		// Currency translation
		{{.money | TransMoney}}

## Links

- [Directory](preface.md)
- Previous section: [User validation](14.4.md)
- Next section: [pprof](14.6.md)