# Localizing attributes when using I18n

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/localizing-attributes-when-using-i18n/167074>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [May 3, 2009, 11:25am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/localizing-attributes-when-using-i18n/167074 "2009-05-03T11:25:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Colorblind](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/e19b73/32.png) [@Colorblind](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Colorblind)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2009, 11:25am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/localizing-attributes-when-using-i18n/167074/1 "2009-05-03T11:25:05Z")

</div>

Currently I’m developing a multilingual app on rails 2.2. I liked very  
much the idea of Xavier Defrang to provide a locale-aware accessor for  
the fields that needs a translation:  
[http://defrang.com/articles/2005/12/02/playing-with-rails-i18n](http://defrang.com/articles/2005/12/02/playing-with-rails-i18n)

I modified code a little to make it work with rails 2.2:

def self.localize(\*attribute\_names)  
attribute\_names.each do |attribute\_name|  
class\_eval %{  
def _#{attribute\_name}  
localized\_method = "#{attribute\_name}_#  
{I18n.locale.to\_s}"  
return send(localized\_method.to\_sym) if respond\_to?  
(localized\_method)  
#{attribute\_name}  
end  
}  
end  
end

it works fine for :show, :index, :new. But when I’m trying to create  
or update, I get the following error:

```
ActiveRecord::UnknownAttributeError in NewsitemsController#create

unknown attribute: _body

```

What’s wrong? Please, help.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Colorblind](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/e19b73/32.png) [@Colorblind](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Colorblind)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2009, 3:53pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/localizing-attributes-when-using-i18n/167074/2 "2009-05-03T15:53:24Z")

</div>

Problem solved by using plugin:

> **[GitHub - iain/translatable\_columns: Provides proxies for localized columns,...](https://github.com/iain/translatable_columns/tree/master)**
>
> master