Starting a new language pack

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If Moodle is not yet translated into your language and you would like to help, please create an account on the Translation site and contact our Moodle translation coordinator, Koen Roggemans, translation@moodle.org.

Once your language pack has been set up, you can follow the instructions provided in Maintaining a language pack.

First:

• Make sure langconfig is properly set up. It would be a very good idea to ask for other translators to double-check your translation of this extremely important file by posting a request in the Translating Moodle forum.
• Take a look at Translation priority. All files have a rating according to how urgent they need translating.

If you have any questions about using AMOS, please post in the Using AMOS forum.

Starting a child language of an existing language pack

If your country uses a variation of an existing language, that has a few (or many) differences from an existing parent language (ie, Canadian French is a variation of French, or US English has some spelling differences from UK English), a child language might be a good solution, as only the strings that need changes have to be uploaded to AMOS. Some examples of existing child languages and the changes from the parent language for Moodle 3.2 are:

• Català (Valencià) , 4416 changes from ca
• Dansk (kursus) , 42 changes from da
• Dansk Rum , 879 changes from da
• Davvisámegiella , 104 changes from no
• Deutsch community , 260 changes from de_du
• Deutsch - Du , 890 changes from de
• Deutsch - Kids , 234 changes from de_du
• English - Pirate , 1687 changes from en
• English for kids , 82 changes from en
• English - United States , 628 changes from en
• Español de México para niños , 142 changes from es_mx
• Español Venezuela , 40 changes from es
• Filipino , 927 changes from tl
• Finlandssvenska , 3437 changes from sv
• Français - Canada , 989 changes from fr
• Hebrew kids , 1226 changes from he
• Japanese kids , 32 changes from ja.
• Kalaallisut , 560 changes from da
• Lithuanian (university) , 14359 changes from lt
• Lulesamisk , 8 changes from no
• Norsk , 797 changes from no
• Norsk - nynorsk , 3245 changes from no
• Sørsamisk , 8 changes from no
• Suomi+ , 1165 changes from fi
• Suomi Filipino , 927 changes from tl
• Wolof , 202 changes from fr

If your local language only has a few differences from an existing language, it still qualifies as a different language for Moodle, and it can have its own language pack (if someone is willing to create and maintain it).

Defining the language code

For historical reasons we use the ISO-639-1 code for the representation of the language. If that doesn't exist, we use the ISO639-3 code (e.g. Moroccan Tamazight). In some exceptional cases, like the Occitan languages, we combine the ISO 639-1 code with the ISO 639-6 code, eg oc_gsc (keep in mind that the ISO 639-6 standard is withdrawn). Other exceptions includes the _kids addition for language packs for very young children and some other exceptions. These exceptions should be kept to a minimum.