Moodle localization

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Moodle localization

• Regional cooperation and towards official
  Serbian language pack(s)

Branka Ignjic, Živana Komlenov Department of
Mathematics and Informatics Faculty of
Science University of Novi Sad
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Introduction

• Moodle is
• a free e-Learning platform
• (Course Management System)
• designed to help educators create
• instructionaly sound online courses

• Moodle has
• Open Source license
• modular design

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Statistics

• over 30.700 registered sites
• (from 191 countries)
• more than 12.800.000 users
• about 1.690.000 teachers

• gt 60 sites with more than 20.000 users
• Site with most users is moodle.org
• 288.000 users and 40 courses

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Statistics
Country
sites
Germany 1300
Hungary 142
Slovenia 121
Romania 76
Bulgaria 64
Croatia 64
Bosnia and Herzegovina 27
Serbia and Montenegro 26
Albania 16
Macedonia 9
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Need for localization

• Usage of Moodle in Serbia is
• rapidly growing.
• Computer illiteracy is note too rare
• among students (schools, universities),
• as well as poor English language skills.
• System itself is created to make
• localization simple, still a huge job.

• Problems which appear are not technical.
• There is a special interface for translating
• strings and help files.

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Previous relevant lang packs

• First official version Dragan Simic, Banja
  Luka, Bosnia
• Partial translation for moodle 1.5 - Miloš
  Bajcetic, Belgrade
• Bosnian language pack (incomplete)
• Croatian language pack (incomplete)
• Grammarsensitive language pack Bojan
  Milosavljevic,
• Kruševac (experimental)

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Current lang packs

• Translation of interface for Moodle 1.6 Živana
  Komlenov
• Accepted as the official UTF-8 Serbian language
  packs
• (August 2006) Cyrillic Latin
• Bosnian (Cyrillic, local version - a dialect
  spoken in Bosnia)

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Fine-tuning updates

• Serbian language packs are
• regularly updated (basic
• strings interesting
• third-party modules).
• Translation of help files has
• been started last winter.

• During DMIs elective e-Learning seminar,
• Nikolina Lackovic and Branka Ignjic
• translated 168 help files for Moodle 1.6
• and wrote a localization guide (in Serbian).

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Extending localization team

• Recently formed localization
• team
• Miloš Bajcetic and his students
• (School of Medicine, Belgrade)
• Bojan Milosavljevic, Kruševac
• Živana Komlenov, Gordana Rakic,
• Ivan Omorac and Branka Ignjic
• (Faculty of Science, Novi Sad)

• First localization meeting
• Novi Sad, July 17, 2007
• gt Complete 1.8.2 interface
• more than 50 of help files
• New gatherings are planned
• Meanwhile, collaboration is continued online

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Localization Web site
http//perun.im.ns.ac.yu/SrMoodle
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Regional collaboration

• Živana was invited to participate at first
• Croatian localization meeting as well
• (June 30, Zagreb).
• This workshop was powered by HrOpen
• (Croatian Society for Open Systems and
  Internet)

• Chief organizer was HrOpens
• chairman, Kristijan Zimmer,
• (employed at Information Support
• Centre, Faculty of Electrical
• Engineering and Computing).

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Regional collaboration

• The meeting was lead by Jasmin Klindžic, who
• maintains the biggest Moodle site in Croatia,
• with more than 3.500 students and over 200
• teachers at Faculty of Humanities and Social
• Sciences in Zagreb.

• Miloš Bajcetic joined Živana at
• this meeting, together with a
• dozen Moodlers from several
• Croatian universities.

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Further work

• Maintenance of Serbian language packs
• Solving language tangles (main problems lack of
  
• adequate IT terms in Serbian, grammatical
  errors)
• Joint activities in the region
  (grammar-sensitivity issues)
• gt Reorganization of language packs to handle
• cases, genders, etc. properly
• Possible hiring of lecturers (funding?)

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Questions?