oh god this is going to be a pain in the ass to i18n, honestly. Hm. 

see https://github.com/edx/edx-platform/pull/2608 and talk with Ned for guidance on how to do time, if you need to use strftime or strptime. I'd honestly look into a strftime or strptime solution instead of rolling your own here. 

What are you trying to format? Just minutes and seconds? I think you can use strftime or strptime for that.