Python\'s locale implementation seems to want to either read the locale from system settings or have it be set via a setlocale call. Neither of these work for me since I\'d like
locale is no good for any app that needs to support several locales -- it's really badly designed for those apps (basically any server-side app, including web apps). Where feasible, PyICU is a vastly superior solution -- top-quality i18n/L10n support, speed, flexibility (downside: while ICU's docs are good, PyICU's, well, not so much;-). Alas, not always are you allowed to deploy your own extensions...:-(.
In particular, I'm still looking for a solid i18n/L10n solution for App Engine apps -- "translation" per se is the least of issues (you can just switch to the right set of templates), the problem is that there are many other L10n aspects (the ones that ICU supports so well, such as collation rules for example, etc, etc). I guess the already-mentioned Babel is the only sensible place to start from.