Translating plugins

Looking for translated plugins in the Moodle plugins database

Almost all contributed plugins published in Moodle Plugins directory have been imported into AMOS and are ready to be translated.
Watch this video tutorial on Translating a Moodle plugin
When a user is looking at the Moodle plugins database, in ' Description tab > Useful links section' there is a link to 'Contribute translation for (your preferred language)' that points to AMOS.
You can click on the 'Contribute translation for (your preferred language)' link.
If you do not have an AMOS account, you need to 'Create a new account' by using the appropriate link.
If you have a translator account in AMOS, you can use AMOS to contribute the translation.
If you select all the language packs (except English fixes) and write 'pluginname' in the box for 'String identifier', AMOS will display the name of the plugin in all available translations.
Make sure that you have selected the Moodle branch(es) that you are interested in
When no translation is available for any/many language(s), the box named 'Translation' will be empty for those languages.
If a plugin name has been translated, it is likely that this plugin has been translated into that language. You can change the settings in AMOS and check for yourself.

Plugin translation priority

Please help Moodle users in other languages by translating your favourite plugins.
Moodle has a continuously updated list of favourite plugins. Consider translating these if not already translated.
You can find the plugins with the largest number of downloads in the last three months at https://moodle.org/plugins/stats.php. These are the plugins most likely to be most useful when translated to your language. Consider translating first.
Moodle has a list of plugins that have received the Reviewers' choice award. These are given by the plugins guardians and reviewers for particularly useful, well coded or otherwise interesting plugins. Consider translating these.
Special cases:
- All plugins with mobile in their name, and all server side plugins to support the Moodle App.
- MoodleCloud strings are used for accessing the MoodleCloud free and paid hosting services.

H5P translations in AMOS

You must translate all the H5P (and hvp) related plugins in AMOS. THEN you will ALSO have to translate the H5P module strings in the H5P site. You can do it either using weblate (preferred method) or GitHub (old method).

H5P translation using weblate (preferred method)

Visit https://translate-h5p.tk/contributing/ and register.

If there is a maintainer for your language, you can make suggestions for string translations.

Check https://h5p.org/forum/6 for the FAQs and your questions/doubts/problems.

If there are no maintainers for your language, you may request to become a maintainer (send an email to serettig@posteo.de).

If one (or a few) of the English source strings is blank, you can simply leave it blank in your translation, too. Weblate might complain about an untranslated string, but you can ignore that!

It is VERY IMPORTANT to make sure that all the English language strings have been translated. If that file has only been partially translated, you should use the original English language strings. If you leave an empty field, there will be a serious ERROR that will block weblate progress and the weblate will CLOSE this module for translation.

If weblate closes a module for translation, you can only add or change language strings vía GitHub (see below).

If you are a language maintainer, ONLY after making sure ALL the strings for one H5P module have been properly translated into your language, you should Commit your changes to wordslate ('Manage' -> Commit). THEN you should PUSH your changes ('Manage' -> Repository maintenance -> PUSH). You must then wait for the people responsible for the GitHub code to review and accept your pull requests by way of weblate.

Don't forget to always push your changes once you've finished a library so that Joubel can review and accept them.

If you notice a typo or any other error in the original English language strings, you can write an issue (or a Pull request) in the GitHub page of the original H5P module. They will be very happy to check it and fix it if necessary.

Translation of H5P module's names using weblate

After translating all the H5P strings using weblate, you may consider translating LUMI using weblate, as that will allow H5P users to see the H5P modules' names and descriptions in languages other than English when they use the free LUMI app to produce .h5p files to be used in a Moodle course.

The description of each H5P module in other languages might make it easier for many new Moodle users of H5P:

H5P translation using GitHub (old method)

While the H5P plugin for Moodle is currently (April 2020) installed in 14333 sites, and the Moodle roadmap shows 'improved H5P integration' contemplated for Moodle 3.8 and beyond, only 30 languages (April 2020) have any translated language strings in AMOS.

Even after translating the H5P plugin for Moodle in AMOS, most users of this plugin in languages other than English may see (partly or totally) untranslated strings when using it. This is because all H5P libraries ("components" / "plugins") have their own separate translation infrastucture which is not related to the H5P Moodle plugin and we are not sure what is the frequency of merging and distributing the contributed translation pull requests that we see on each library's repository on GitHub.

There is a page providing an overview of the H5P content-type translation status at https://localization.h5p.org/

When you click on a language (Spanish for example), you will see all the H5P modules with the proportion of strings translated into that language.

When you click on a module (Audio for example) you will see a list of all the untranslated and translated strings for that language for that module

At the bottom of that page, there will be a link to 'Head over to the source repository'. If you click on that link, you will be taken to the GitHub page for that module, where you can fix or add the translations for your language and make a 'Pull request' to contribute this translation.

Non-translatable strings

While AMOS does a great job for translating the Moodle core and most Moodle plugin language strings, some English language strings are not available for translation with AMOS.

Plugins in the Other category

The plugins classified as 'Other ' (Utilities, Experimental or Incubating) are not translatable by AMOS (see this forum thread). You can use the language customization tool within your Moodle (production or local) server to produce the .php file containing the translated language strings for your language and email this file to the particular 'other' plugin maintainer, so that it can be included in the lang folder within the downloadable Zip file for the plugin.

Plugins with coding errors

Some plugins (of types different from 'Other') available for download in the Moodle plugins directory may not have English language strings available for translation in AMOS because of coding errors, that must be identified and fixed by the plugin maintainer, See Plugin contribution checklist:Strings:

The plugin code must not rely on trailing and leading whitespace in strings.
The string file must be considered as pure data file with the syntax $string['id'] = 'value';
No other PHP syntax such as concatenation, heredoc and nowdoc is supported by the tools that AMOS use when processing the strings (even if it may work in Moodle itself).
Use neither string concatenation operators nor other PHP logic inside string files. Those should really be considered as plain data files with simple $string['key'] = 'value'; syntax, nothing more.

Plugins with hard-coded English language strings

Sometimes you might have translated 100% of the strings available in AMOS for a given plugin, and you can still view the original English (non-translated) strings.

Please check that you have purged your browser cache and the server cache, waited for one hour (for AMOS to update the language packs), and updated your language packs.
If the problem persists, please write the plugin maintainer by clicking at the 'Bug tracker' link shown in the given plugin's page in the Moodle plugins database.
If the plugin author has nested additional 'Lang' folders inside any subdirectories within the plugin folder structure, the English language strings in these nested Lang folder will not be available for AMOS, and they would seem to be hard-wired. Please contact the plugin author.
Most Moodle plugin authors have been very fast at replacing the English hard-coded strings with strings variables that can now be translated in AMOS.
If you suspect the problem is in a core plugin, you can post an issue in the AMOS translation forum.

Log descriptions can not be translated

See why log descriptions are not translated.

Items that must NOT be translated

See the Items that are not to be translated in the Translation FAQ

If translations are available in AMOS for some Moodle branches but not available for other branches

Sometimes a plugin may have its English language strings available for translations for some Moodle branches but not for others even though the plugin itself is indeed available for download for all branches in the Moodle plugins database.

Please see an example in this post. The cause is very likely a programming error (see 'Plugins with coding errors' above), that must be fixed by the plugin maintainer.

What happens if a plugin ZIP file includes translation(s) inside the lang folder

If a site has debugging on, there will be a warning message about 'Found language file' when the user installs the plugin, but the installation may proceed.

The Language strings inside a properly installed downloaded plugin will overwrite the strings translations of the language pack, but they can be overwritten by the strings defined with the Language customization.

Strings priority

Strings defined by the language customization tool
Strings defined in an installed child language pack (e.g., the es_ve language pack)
Strings defined in an installed parent language pack (e.g., the es language pack)
Strings enclosed inside the plugin_name/lang/xx/yy.php folder (where xx is a language code other than the en folder) from a downloaded and installed plugin ZIP file (e.g., inside the /server/moodle/theme/adaptable/lang/es/theme_adaptable.php file)
Original Australian English language strings shipped with the downloaded Moodle branch.
Original Australian English language strings inside the /lang/en folder in the downloaded/updated plugin ZIP file

Note: See the local String override plugin that makes it possible for plugins to override existing translations regardless if they're bundled with Moodle or they're originated from a community plugin.

Documentation