Reproduce the bug in https://github.com/mrjoes/flask-admin/issues/781

babel.cfg

[python: **.py]
[jinja2: **/templates/**.html]
extensions=jinja2.ext.autoescape,jinja2.ext.with_

messages.pot

# Chinese translations for PROJECT.                                                                                                                 
# Copyright (C) 2015 ORGANIZATION
# This file is distributed under the same license as the PROJECT project.
# FIRST AUTHOR <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, 2015.
#
#
msgid ""
msgstr ""
"Project-Id-Version: PROJECT VERSION\n"
"Report-Msgid-Bugs-To: EMAIL@ADDRESS\n"
"POT-Creation-Date: 2015-02-03 15:45+0800\n"
"PO-Revision-Date: 2015-02-03 15:45+0800\n"
"Last-Translator: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>\n"
"Language-Team: zh <LL@li.org>\n"
"Plural-Forms: nplurals=2; plural=(n != 1)\n"
"MIME-Version: 1.0\n"
"Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8\n"
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n"
"Generated-By: Babel 1.3\n"

#: translations.py:9
msgid "My App"
msgstr "我的应用"

my_app.py

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

from flask import Flask, redirect
from flask.ext.admin import Admin, BaseView, expose
from flask.ext.babel import lazy_gettext
from flask_babelex import Babel

babel = Babel()

@babel.localeselector
def get_locale():
    return 'zh'

app = Flask(__name__)
babel.init_app(app)
admin = Admin(app, name=lazy_gettext('My App'))

@app.route('/')
def to_admin():
    return redirect('/admin')
    
if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run(debug=True)   

put the file above in same level. run

pybabel init -i messages.pot -d translations -l zh

pybabel compile -d translations

python my_app.py