A little hack to switch locales and override some locale conventions temporarily.

locale_hack.py

# Store the current locale
default_loc = locale.getlocale()

# Swap to some foreign locale, e.g. German
locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, 'de_DE')

# Define a new localeconv() with some overrides
# see http://docs.python.org/2/library/locale.html#locale.localeconv
def _temp_localeconv(lc=locale.localeconv()):
    lc.update({'decimal_point': ',', 'thousands_sep': '.'})
    return lc

# Do the override
locale.localeconv = _temp_localeconv

# Do the actual price string to float conversion using the locale
value = locale.atof("1.234,56)
# Should return: float 1234.56

# Reset locale
locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, default_loc)