Moodle Academy is a community of best practice and ongoing professional development. To make sure that Moodle Academy is accessible to as many people as possible globally, Moodle Academy launched the Translate Moodle Academy course in June 2022 in conjunction with the Moodle content translation plugin.
The Moodle content translation plugin was developed by Andrew Hancox alongside Moodle Academy, specifically to enable the Moodle community to translate content.
The plugin allows users with adequate permissions to provide inline translation of content in a Moodle site or specific pages. As with all Moodle plugins, it is open and available for anyone to install on their Moodle site; it is available from the Moodle Plugins Directory and there is a link to it in the course content.
Moodle encourages members of its community to contribute to translating Moodle Academy courses into as many languages as possible.
Get started with the translate Moodle Academy course
To be able to translate content for Moodle Academy, it is necessary to complete the Translate Moodle Academy course, which is free and open to do. The purpose of the course is to teach the background knowledge and skills necessary for content translation to the Moodle community. Once a participant has completed the course they are given permission on the Moodle Academy site to start translating content.
There are a few requirements learners need to meet to demonstrate their competence in translating. Moodle Academy asks that anyone who wants to complete the course must be bilingual, with at least B2 English proficiency.
The Translate Moodle Academy course covers:
- General background information on Moodle’s multi-language functionality.
- Information on the content translation plugin.
- Guidance on video transcript translation.
- Information on the AMOS translation toolkit.
- Several tasks for participants to put knowledge into practice.
- A quiz to check the participant’s understanding.
As well as translating the text of the Moodle Academy pages, translation of video transcripts is another important part of making all content inclusive and accessible.
One course task is for the participant to translate a transcript of a video into their language and submit it to be reviewed by the Moodle Academy team. The team will run an automated check and sign off on the submission to make sure it is accurate. Once this is approved, the participant will have completed the course and gained the necessary permissions to begin translating content on the site.
How to begin translating for Moodle Academy
Once a user has passed the Translate Moodle Academy course and been given permissions, they can start by choosing their own language from the language menu and enable content translation by choosing ‘start in-line translation’ from the plugin menu. When that option has been enabled, all translatable content on the page will have an icon displayed next to it to show the current translation status and allow it to be translated.
There are three different icons showing the translation status:
- Missing: This icon shows that the content hasn’t been translated.
- Stale: This icon shows the translations that are out of date when the original English content has been modified after a translation has been provided.
- Translated: This icon shows that the content is translated and up to date.
Clicking on any of those icons allows you to add or update the content. There is also a content translation menu that allows you to view and manage translations across a page, a course, or the whole site. Selecting an option on this menu will display a report of translatable content. From here you can also provide translations, rather than visiting an individual page to translate inline.
Get involved with Moodle Academy
At Moodle, the team is committed to making Moodle Academy as inclusive as possible. As well as the Translate Moodle Academy course, consider joining the Get Involved course and give your ideas on topics to be covered in future webinars and courses.