### 6.23.3.4 Deferred translations

In most coding situations, strings are translated were they are coded. Occasionally however, you need to mark strings for translation, but defer actual translation until later. A classic example is:

      animals = ['mollusk',
                 'albatross',
      	   'rat',
      	   'penguin',
      	   'python',
      	   ]
      # ...
      for a in animals:
          print a

Here, you want to mark the strings in the `animals` list as being translatable, but you don't actually want to translate them until they are printed.

Here is one way you can handle this situation:

      def _(message): return message

      animals = [_('mollusk'),
                 _('albatross'),
      	   _('rat'),
      	   _('penguin'),
      	   _('python'),
      	   ]

      del _

      # ...
      for a in animals:
          print _(a)

This works because the dummy definition of `_()` simply returns the string unchanged. And this dummy definition will temporarily override any definition of `_()` in the built-in namespace (until the `del` command). Take care, though if you have a previous definition of `_` in the local namespace.

Note that the second use of `_()` will not identify ``a'' as being translatable to the pygettext program, since it is not a string.

Another way to handle this is with the following example:

      def N_(message): return message

      animals = [N_('mollusk'),
                 N_('albatross'),
      	   N_('rat'),
      	   N_('penguin'),
      	   N_('python'),
      	   ]

      # ...
      for a in animals:
          print _(a)

In this case, you are marking translatable strings with the function `N_()`,6.4 which won't conflict with any definition of `_()`. However, you will need to teach your message extraction program to look for translatable strings marked with `N_()`. pygettext and xpot both support this through the use of command line switches.

#### Footnotes

...N_(),6.4
  The choice of `N_()` here is totally arbitrary; it could have just as easily been `MarkThisStringForTranslation()`.