babelfish
A module to work with countries and languages
Decision gist · record as of 2026-08-14
Yes, if you need a lightweight, standards-based reference for countries, languages, and scripts. The package is stable, permissively licensed, and has no security vulnerabilities. Install friction is minimal. The main caveat is dormant maintenance—827 days since last release—so if you need active support or expect frequent updates for new Python versions, verify that the current release works with your target environment before committing.AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying
Before you install
- Requires Python 3.8 or later (supports up to 3.12).
- Low install friction with only two lightweight runtime dependencies (importlib-resources and importlib-metadata).
- Maintenance is dormant—last release was 827 days ago and the last commit was 2025-02-09—but the package is marked Production/Stable and has no known vulnerabilities, suggesting it is feature-complete rather than abandoned.
License · maintenance · safety
BSD-3-Clause (permissive) — Licensed under BSD-3-Clause (permissive), which allows commercial and private use with minimal restrictions; you must include a copy of the license and copyright notice.
last release 2024-05-09 (827 days) · last repo commit 2025-02-09 · 27 stars
0 known vulnerabilities (OSV.dev, 2026-08-14) · 133,968 downloads/mo, #11,492 on PyPI
Alternatives
Verify before relying
pip install babelfish
import babelfish
language = babelfish.Language('eng')
country = babelfish.Country('GB')
script = babelfish.Script('Hira')- Whether the package's dormant maintenance status (827 days since last release) poses a risk for future Python version compatibility or bug fixes.
- Performance characteristics when working with large sets of language/country/script conversions.
What it is and what it does
BabelFish is a reference library for working with ISO-standardized country, language, and script identifiers in Python. It wraps ISO-3166 (countries), ISO-639-3 (languages), and ISO-15924 (scripts) into Python objects, allowing you to construct and query them by code, name, or other attributes. The library includes built-in converters for common alternate naming schemes (e.g., alpha2, alpha3b, opensubtitles for languages; country names for countries), making it easy to map between different coding systems without maintaining your own lookup tables.
Typical use cases include building multilingual applications, normalizing user-supplied language or country inputs, and working with subtitle or media metadata that uses non-standard language codes. The package is lightweight, has no heavy external dependencies, and works across modern Python versions.
Use it for
- Normalize user-supplied language codes (e.g., 'en', 'eng', 'English') into a canonical Language object for downstream processing.
- Map between different language coding schemes (ISO-639-3, alpha2, OpenSubtitles codes) in subtitle or media applications.
- Build locale-aware applications by looking up country and language metadata from ISO codes.
- Validate and parse language-country pairs (e.g., Portuguese from Brazil) with script support.
- Populate dropdown menus or search filters with standardized country and language names.
Worth the install?
AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page. Verify before relying on it.
Yes, if you need a lightweight, standards-based reference for countries, languages, and scripts.
The package is stable, permissively licensed, and has no security vulnerabilities. Install friction is minimal. The main caveat is dormant maintenance—827 days since last release—so if you need active support or expect frequent updates for new Python versions, verify that the current release works with your target environment before committing.
Install
babelfish on PyPI
Before you install
Low install friction with only two lightweight runtime dependencies (importlib-resources and importlib-metadata). Maintenance is dormant—last release was 827 days ago and the last commit was 2025-02-09—but the package is marked Production/Stable and has no known vulnerabilities, suggesting it is feature-complete rather than abandoned.
Requires Python 3.8 or later (supports up to 3.12).
License in practice
Licensed under BSD-3-Clause (permissive), which allows commercial and private use with minimal restrictions; you must include a copy of the license and copyright notice.
Quickstart
pip install babelfish
import babelfish
language = babelfish.Language('eng')
country = babelfish.Country('GB')
script = babelfish.Script('Hira')Verify before relying
- Whether the package's dormant maintenance status (827 days since last release) poses a risk for future Python version compatibility or bug fixes.
- Performance characteristics when working with large sets of language/country/script conversions.
Package facts
| License | BSD-3-Clause permissive |
| Python support | Supports the current Python release <4.0,>=3.8 |
| Install friction | Low. Pure-Python wheel |
| Runtime dependencies | 2 packagesimportlib-resourcesimportlib-metadata |
| Maintenance | Dormant 827 days since the last release |
| Last repo commit | |
| First released | |
| Downloads | 133,968 / month, #11,492 on PyPI 30-day window, as of 2026-08-14 |
| Known vulnerabilities | None known OSV.dev, checked 2026-08-14 |
| Classifiers | Development Status :: 5 - Production/StableIntended Audience :: DevelopersLicense :: OSI Approved :: BSD LicenseOperating System :: OS IndependentProgramming Language :: PythonProgramming Language :: Python :: 3Programming Language :: Python :: 3 :: OnlyProgramming Language :: Python :: 3.10Programming Language :: Python :: 3.11Programming Language :: Python :: 3.12Programming Language :: Python :: 3.8Programming Language :: Python :: 3.9Topic :: Software Development :: InternationalizationTopic :: Software Development :: Libraries :: Python Modules |
Evidence: babelfish-0.6.1-py3-none-any.whl
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See also isocodes · country_list · country-converter · pycountry · langcodes · iso3166 · countryinfo · pycountry-convert · geonamescache · libhxl