Multilingual Interface and Content in the OppiaMobile App

For translating OppiaMobile, there are two separate areas to consider, the app interface and the course content.

App Interface

The language that the OppiaMobile app interface appears in (e.g. the buttons, menu items etc), is determined by translation files directly included and compiled into the app. Which language file is used is determined by the language that the whole phone interface is set to. This will default to English if the phone is set to a language that Oppia does not have a language file for.

To add a new interface language:

• Make copy of strings.xml from https://github.com/DigitalCampus/oppia-mobile-android/blob/master/res/values/strings.xml

• Translate the English text (just the value, not the string name attribute).

• Create a new directory in the res directory called values-XX - where XX is the language code for the translation

• Copy the new strings.xml file into this new directory

Course Content

Providing translations of course content is completely separate from the application interface. This means that users can select which language they would like to view the course content in, but without needing to change the phone interface language.

When the app is first installed, the course language setting will default to the phone settings language. If a course isn’t provided in the phone setting language, then it will default to the first language the course is provided in.

To create a course in multiple languages, when you are writing the course, just use the usual Moodle method for providing multilingual courses. You can find more information about this at: http://docs.moodle.org/en/Multi_language_content

When the course is exported to OppiaMobile, it will then allow users to switch between languages in the OppiaMobile app.