Languages

That is certainly the worry, and that I why I asked the quetion here, rather than just rushing ahead to write the code.

Hi Michael

I didn't get your point with the example https://google.fr/. This is what I get:

Browser Firefox. This was its language setting:

Your comment on "a global level by way of a lang attribute at the very top of the HTML" is interesting. Any connection with why Atto generates tons of tags <span lang="SI-LK"> tags? I am wasting so much time cleaning them.

For me, the use case certainly came first: OU Languages academics (who are are already using the feature we built them to force the language for individual questions embedded in learning material using https://moodle.org/plugins/filter_embedquestion) came to the product owner I work with (Chris) and me, and said "please can we have this for quizzes too, becuase ...".

I may not have expressed that here, becuase I only started posting here after I had taken an initial look to ensure that what they wanted was technically feasible. So, my posting here may have started in the middle.

Thanks for everyone who has expressed an opinion so far. It is has been interesting reading. Please carry on

Hi Sander,

here is an interesting use case.
Teachers are often free to define how they teach a class. Often the institution defines conditions for graded activities/exams.
Often this means the exam are made under the same condition for everyone.

With this new tool a teacher can create multiple language courses or show the Moodle language elements in the preferred language of the student. But for assignments or quizzes s/he can fix the interface language.

Re-reading the thread I'm not sure whether my examples are directly related to the original question. Since there seems to be an interest in examples from the practice, I'll describe the two completely opposite types of sites I maintain.

The first type is in Central Europe. Technically they have any combination of the four language packs, German, French, Italian and English, installed. The Default language (lang) is the first language, say German. Language autodetect (autolang) is set, the Display language menu (langmenu) too. The server OS need to have all these locales. On top of that a language filter, say https://moodle.org/plugins/filter_multilang2, is installed.

From the teachers' view, they simply enter content in the medium of instructions. They don't worry about the selected language. The students are young adults, they know the connection between the browser's language settings and the language selected from the drop-down menu in Moodle. The course contents are essentially monolingual. I am yet to find a clean multilingual course which makes use of the language filter. Other additions like https://moodle.org/plugins/availability_language not needed.

So plain and simple multi-language sites following in https://docs.moodle.org/en/Language_settings. All are happy.


The second type is less satisfactory. The sites are for Southeast Asia where the local languages are Indic. As I wrote earlier, "they don't know the technical terms in their language, use English instead. But 100% English is also not OK." https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=434039#p1746572. They wish to see both languages on every page! They don't even expect a language switch! Many are surprised that one can type in the own alphabet. Unicode is a new challenge, since the Windows world is used to enter "fonts".

From a teachers' view not only the courses are ugly, embedded images have to be repeated, not to mention multimedia. I'm struggling to take them towards the above model, but it's a long tunnel.

Hi Sander: we at ULPGC has one activity hacked to get this precise behaviour. I think Tim's suggestion is a very good one that with a single option more gets a lot of flexibility.

Our use case is mod_tracker. We use this activity to collect input form users (students, teachers). For instance students need to make a Proposal for a master thesis, the proposal should be reviewed by a board (some teachers) and approved or rejected. Or teachers need to submit Reports about performance, and Deans need to collect them. We use the same module for both (and more) cases.

Calling everything an "Issue" may be an issue. People is more confortable submiting Reports or Informs, or Proposals or Applications. We do use the mod_tracker as a "bug report" application in other contexts. And responses to those submissions, Accept/Reject, many times require more sensible words for each case.

We ended hacking mod_tracker to allow custom language packs used in a per instance basis. You may have three instances in the same course, for different purposes, each with a subtly different language in use.

I see the same need even for such regular activities as Assignments or Quizzes. The lang strings in the module interface perhaps need to talk about "Examination", not a Quiz. Or the quiz is used as a glorifies Survey. We can set the name of the activity but it is often much, very much clears for users if lang strings may adapt to such specialized cases.

Having this option, and Admin can setup a number or custom lang packs quite easily, without really touching moodle code. The extra option complexity is cheap for the possible uses.