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Producing multilingual content

There are many ways for, the multilang-filter that comes with Moodle is often preferred as it is available. But people do seem to prefer multilang2 when dealign with richer content that needs to work with scripting and other syntax. As dealing with the localisation can also affect the way STACK does some special things we have added yet another way as a built-in alternative for those cases where the language needs to be passed into places that traditional Moodle-filters do not see.

By using the built-in block

In STACK 4.4 we added a STACK way of doing this that makes it simpler to mix languages in the logic and for example MCQ-labels. Previously the multilang2 filter has been able to do MCQ-labels but the future does not look bright for that.

The new logic will mimic the multilang2 filter in the sense that it includes similar special language-code other which will be used if no matching language can be found. However, it does act like multilang if other is not present and selects the first defined language. Like multilang2 we also support defining multiple language codes as comma separated lists. The order of languages is defined by the order they appear in the question-text.

The block is used like this:

[[lang code='fi']]...Text in Finnish...[[/lang]]
[[lang code="en,other"]]...Text in English...[[/lang]]

It is also usable in inline CASText2:

lbls: [castext("[[lang code='en']]Like this {@...@}[[/lang]]..."),...];

Nested language blocks will not get displayed unless they have matching codes, so you may not use en wrapper and en_gb, en_us within it to fine tune things. Only one code will match in the whole question so if the VLE uses en_us and it is found in the question at any place then that is the only code that matches.

If you are dealing with localisation in JSXGraph or MCQ-label style situations you might want to use the new lang-blocks, but do note that while they do not require any additional filters to be installed they still require that the system has language-packs and the users have the ability to select the language.

By using the Moodle filter multilang

STACK questions can be easily localized for different languages using the multi-language content filter. http://docs.moodle.org/en/Multi-language_content_filter. That is to say, a single question can exist in multiple languages and the user can choose the language they use.

This page deals with translating text within individual questions. It does not deal with translating the Moodle and STACK interface. See the page on Language packs and translating STACK.

Installation

Your site administrator must enable the Moodle multi-language content filter.
The multi-language content filter must be applied before the MathJax filter, otherwise strange results will occur.

Authoring questions

The filter works by searching the document for all multilang blocks and displaying the block that matches the selected language.

<span lang="en" class="multilang">...Text in English...</span>
<span lang="fi" class="multilang">...Text in Finnish...</span>

If no block matching the user's language can be found, the block encountered first is displayed. In the above example the English block would be displayed if the user's language was not either English or Finnish. The English block should be the first block in the documents in order for it to be the default language in case no matching language can be found.

When translating STACK assignments into different languages, it should be noted that the question text field may not contain multiple instances of input or validation fields of the same name. This means that the input and validations fields must be placed outside multilang blocks in order for them to be visible in all the available languages. The following example will illustrate this.

STACK would not accept the following question text:

<span lang="en" class="multilang">
   <p>
      Let \( {\bf a} = ({@a@}, {@b@}) \). Find a vector \({\bf b}\neq {\bf 0}\) such that it is perpendicular to \(\mathbf{a}\)
   </p>
   <p>
      \({\bf b} = \Big(\)[[input:ans1]]\(,\) [[input:ans2]]\(\Big)\)
   </p>
   <div>
      [[validation:ans1]]
   </div>
   <div>
      [[validation:ans2]]
   </div>
</span>

<span lang="fi" class="multilang">
   <p>
      Olkoon vektori \( {\bf a} = ({@a@}, {@b@}) \). Anna vektori \({\bf b}\neq {\bf 0}\) siten, että vektorit ovat kohtisuorassa toisiaan vastaan.
   </p>
   <p>
      \({\bf b} = \Big(\)[[input:ans1]]\(,\) [[input:ans2]]\(\Big)\)
   </p>
   <div>
      [[validation:ans1]]
   </div>
   <div>
      [[validation:ans2]]
   </div>
</span>

But this question text causes no issues:

<span lang="en" class="multilang">
   <p>
      Let \( {\bf a} = ({@a@}, {@b@}) \). Find a vector \({\bf b}\neq {\bf 0}\) such that it is perpendicular to \(\mathbf{a}\)
   </p>
</span>
<span lang="fi" class="multilang">
   <p>
      Olkoon vektori \( {\bf a} = ({@a@}, {@b@}) \). Anna vektori \({\bf b}\neq {\bf 0}\) siten, että vektorit ovat kohtisuorassa toisiaan vastaan.
   </p>
</span>

<p>
   \({\bf b} = \Big(\)[[input:ans1]]\(,\) [[input:ans2]]\(\Big)\)
</p>
<div>[[validation:ans1]]</div>
<div>[[validation:ans2]]</div>

Changing STACK's language

If you have written a multilingual question, and a student wants to see it in a certain language, they have to change their preferred language. In Moodle, this is done by clicking on their profile, and then going to Preferences, Preferred language and selecting the language. This will not only change the language of all question text (where multilingual blocks have been used), but also the language of the default Moodle and STACK interface (if this translation is available). The specific language pack has to be installed on your server by the server administrator to allow this. More information is available in the developer docs under Translating STACK.