Hi all,

Does a module exist that can look up localised language names for ISO
639 language codes? If not, could one be constructed according to (sort
of) the following specifications?

1) Look up a localised language name for an ISO 639-1 language code for
a required parameter named code, providing the language code, and an
optional parameter named lang, providing the output language code, which
by default is set to 'en'. Example input and output would would be:

iso6391name(code='en') => 'English'
iso6391name(code='zu', lang='en') => 'Zulu'
iso6391name(code='zu', lang='nl') => 'Zoeloe'
iso6391name(code='nl', lang='en') => 'Dutch'

2) Reverse lookup of 1) from localised language to language code, e.g.:
iso6391code(name='English') => 'en'
iso6391code(name='Zulu', lang='en') => 'zu'
iso6391code(name='Zoeloe', lang='nl') => 'zu'
iso6391code(name='Dutch', lang='en') => 'nl'

3) Look up native language name for an ISO 639-1 language code for a
required parameter named code, providing the language code. Example
input and output would would be:

iso6391native(code='en') => 'English'
iso6391native(code='nl) => 'Nederlands'

4) Retrieving a tuple with all language codes. Example output would be:

iso6391codes() => ('aa', 'ab', ..., 'zu')

5) Retrieving a tuple with all localised language names for an optional
parameter named lang, providing the output language code, which by
default is set to 'en'. Example input and output would be:

iso6391names() => ('Afar', 'Abkhazian', ..., 'Zulu')
iso6391names(lang='nl') => ('Afar', 'Abchazisch', ..., 'Zoeloe')

6), 7), 8), 9), 10) Something similar for ISO 639-2 language codes

11), 12), 13), 14), 15) Something similar for ISO 639-2 language codes

sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-1_codes
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijst_van_ISO_639-1-codes

I have a very simple implementation for English and Dutch but figured
that such a module should be available for all developers in all
languages. Hence this request to build something from scratch in the
Python localisation community.

Implementing functionality as described above will boost the ease of
internalisation and localisation of Python applications.

Please reply to this issue for constructive feedback.

Thanks,

Pander

PS   The original post in i18n-sg is here:
  http://mail.python.org/pipermail/i18n-sig/2009-April/002117.html

I think the pycountry module might be helpful:

http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pycountry

As it is at version 0.11, I think it is very far away of being ready for
inclusion in the standard library. If this doesn't quite do what you
want, please cooperate with the author of the module to make it fit your
needs.

Babel already provides (almost all of) this. It uses the Unicode CLDR
data to present the information you need.

See http://babel.edgewall.org/

Suggest closing, as pycountry is available and Babel is excellent.

Agreed! Like time zones country and language information are altered ever so often. Babel, zope.i18n and pyicu provide excellent interfaces to the information and can be updated separately from the stdlib.