Multilanguage capablilites

Multilanguage capablilites

by Stephan Robotta -
Number of replies: 6

Hi,

At the BFH (Bern School of Applied Sciences) we officially use French an German as teaching languages. Hence, there is a need to distribute course material in both languages. Moodle supports multi language content and there are a few plugins that makes it even easier to work with it.

However, there are a few niches where multi language support is still missing or broken. Some time ago I was working on the drag and drop questions (https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-61286). In the last two days I was looking at the cloze questions that partially support multilanguage content but could be improved as well (I have done some coding on it but not yet put it into the tracker).

Using multi language content is sometimes not that easy for the inexperienced user (in terms of using web technologies). I realized this when trying out examples and writing them down. Documentation can be improved here.

I would like to share some problems that we have had in the past and possible solutions in case there are but at the same would like to dive into UI/User stories, how to make it as easy as possible for the users to deal with multi language content.

Best regards, Stephan

In reply to Stephan Robotta

Re: Multilanguage capablilites

by Marcus Green -
I have looked at that ticket. Can you confirm this is about displaying the answers in multiple languages. So the potential answers (e.g. the draggable items are shown in the users language. I looked at that for my Gapfill quesiton types and it would be tricky to do. By contrast the text around the questions does display correctly with the mlang filters. By the way, for anyone who has not used it, try mlang2 it is excellent.
In reply to Marcus Green

Re: Multilanguage capablilites

by Stephan Robotta -
I hope that it works. Just tried the first question from the testing instructions again, and yes - works for me in my installation smile. What just got me off the track a little, the feedback comment was always in english. I should have used the multilang feature there as well (which is possible, I simply missed that).

mlang2 is good and whenever I can, I am trying to use it. Also we started working on the multilang plugin for the new TinyMCE (https://moodle.org/plugins/tiny_multilang2) that used the work of the previous plugins from the old Tiny + Atto to support mutlilanguage items. That makes it easier for technically inexperienced people to use it.

I guess in your gapfill this might also be possible to use. Bascially the Moodle filters need to be applied to the textual content. This work for the ticket mentioned above as well as my cloze questions that I was looking at this week. The problem with that approach is, there might be sideeffects from other filters that I am not yet aware of.

I am happy to share thoughts on this at the conference.
In reply to Stephan Robotta

Re: Multilanguage capablilites

by Marcus Green -

"I guess in your gapfill this might also be possible to use."

The problem with gapfill is that the text within the [brackets] is the key to the correct answer. To make mlang work I would need a new layer of indirection when displaying and when marking. My wordselect question has an issue that the offset of the word indicates if it is correct, and once the text through filters that offset changes. Luckily nobody has noticed so I will never need to fix it .....

In reply to Stephan Robotta

Re: Multilanguage capablilites

by Christopher Sangwin -

Just to add to the discussion, as one of the developers of qtype_stack, we needed to improve multi-language support as well.  In particular, we have problems with language in mathematical content, and support for alt-text in randomly generated images.  Our approach is documented here

https://docs.stack-assessment.org/en/Authoring/Languages/

Chris

In reply to Stephan Robotta

Re: Multilanguage capablilites

by Valérie Pierre -

Hi Stephan,

Multi-language capabilities in Moodle courses is a great topic! On my end, I have courses in 3 languages (DE, FR, EN) and I create separate courses for each language. So I'd be interested in learning more about your approach, and the pros and cons.

Best regards,

Valerie

In reply to Valérie Pierre

Re: Multilanguage capablilites

by Dustin Schiele -
Hi Valerie & Stephan & all,

Multi-language is indeed a great topic and I would very much like to exchange thoughts and share experiences with everyone. 

There is one particular problem that I cannot seem to solve: multi-language notifications in Moodle!
Our courses are named like this:
Course name

But in emails and also the bell icon top right the tags do not get replaced:
In notifications, the course name is displayed "raw": Course name
I have tried the Moodle included plugin that uses <span lang=""> as well.

In boost, the notification just stubbornly sticks to English no matter the rest of the UI being German:
The notification reads "Dustin's Test Course content change".

Any ideas on getting this to work, so that users can be informed about changes in their correct language, without displaying the tags?

Looking forward to meeting you all!
 .dustin