Ok... this is *really* the last time. I don't know why I was using a regular expression, when string.replace would have done just as well. Here's my final version of the external method. I *promise* I won't change it again. Of course, the simplest version would be from string import replace def D_date(datestring): datestring=replace(datestring, 'Monday', 'Montag') datestring=replace(datestring, 'Tuesday', 'Dienstag') # und so weiter However, this would be slower to execute than using "reduce", as below. ---- from string import replace # you can remove lines where the words are the same in both languages replacements={ 'Monday':'Montag', 'Tuesday':'Dienstag', 'Wednesday':'Mittwoch', 'Thursday':'Donnerstag', 'Friday':'Freitag', 'Saturday':'Samstag', 'Sunday':'Sonntag', 'January':'Januar', 'February':'Februar', 'March':'März', 'April':'April', 'May':'Mai', 'June':'Juni', 'July':'Juli', 'August':'Augustus', 'September':'September', 'October':'Oktober', 'November':'November', 'December':'Dezember' } replace_fns=[] for e,d in replacements.items(): replace_fns.append( eval("lambda x: replace(x, '%s', '%s')" % (e, d))) del replacements def D_date(datestring): return reduce(lambda x,y: y(x), replace_fns, datestring) ---- -- Steve Alexander Software Engineer Cat-Box limited http://www.cat-box.net