Deepler is a local Moodle plugin that provides automatic machine translation using the ©DeepL Pro Translation api. It is developed for those who want to translate a course all on one page, without having to navigate to each module and update manually translations and the {mlang} tags. Translation workflow being the following:
- Set Moodle current language as your source language.
- Fine tune your ©DeepL's settings.
- Select the target language.
- Select the fields to translate and if need different source than the current main (Moodle's).
- Send to ©DeepL.
- Review and or amend automated translations.
- Save translations to Moodle's DB (with the multilang {mlang XX} tags).
- Your course is multilingual.
- ...
Multi-Language Content (v2) is a dependency of this plugin and will not work without it.
- Installation
- Configuration
- Translating
- User tour (inline tutorial)
- WARNINGS
- Compatibility
- How does this plugin differs from Content Translation Manager and Content Translation Filter?
- Future (todos)
- Submit an issue
- Changelog
- Coding, Debugging and Contributing
- Fork
Clone or download this plugin to /moodlewww/local/deepler and run through the database
upgrade process.
You need a ©DeepL API Free or Pro account. Multi-Language Content (v2) is a dependency of this plugin and will not work without it.
see Coding, Debugging and Contributing if you intend to help improving this plugin, or just if you are an admin and want to do some test in a dedicated sandbox.
Course Translator will extend Moodle with the local/deepler:edittranslations capability. Assign the capability to a new Translator role or add it to one of your
existing roles.
The context for this capability is set to USER so that you can also assign it to a user directly (provided it will have capabilities to access the course and modules).
To configure the plugin, navigate to Site Administration -> Plugins -> Local plugins -> Manage local plugins. From this page you can configure ©DeepL settings, specify wether you are using ©DeepL API Free or ©DeepL API Pro. Visit the ©DeepL API page to signup for an api key that you can enter into local plugin settings.
Set to true will check "escape LaTeX formulas", in the course translation form. This will have the effect to enable by default the Non translation of LaTeX formulas in course (when set here to true). Unchecking it here if your organisation rarely uses LaTeX formulas in the courses to slightly improve Deepler's performances,
Do not send <pre>...</pre> to translation by default.
Small text field are often limited in the database. The text content grows quite fast (plus the mlang tags) at each translation steps. After translation, if the text is too big, the DB will through an error.
Size this here based on your main language properties and the number on languages your Moodle supports
To begin translating content, visit a course, open the course settings action menu, and then go to Course Translator.
You will be sent to the translation page for the course.
There you can fine tune ©DeepL's commands. Usually the default as set below should work fine with Moodle activity content.
Glossaries' content have to be sent by other means than this plugin, but it is in our todo list to add an interface for that here. DeepL's Glossary ID's are saved by course id + source/target lang pairs in the Cookie for now.
Because Deepl is not very Good at that, iow we experienced that it would behave with inconsistency.
When this is set, Deepler will seek
Deepl API language portfolio differs from Moodle language packs.
Currently Deepl doesn't support sub language for source lanagues. See https://developers.deepl.com/docs/resources/supported-languages.
But forces sub languages for targets with :
- EN-GB - English (British)
- EN-US - English (American)
- PT-BR - Portuguese (Brazilian)
- PT-PT - Portuguese (all Portuguese variants excluding Brazilian Portuguese)
- ZH-HANS - Chinese (simplified)
- ZH-HANT - Chinese (traditional)
If your installation has sub local language, for example de_ch, it will be considered as its main (de).
So the plugin behaviour is the following : The proposed source languages will main languages of your Moodle instance lang list. The proposed targets will be all you available languages if they have a main Deepl compatible main language and the matching sub languages. But will then save it as the main language in the DB.
For example if you have a EN package you will be able to choose either EN-GB or EN-US as your target language, but it will save it as {mlang en}
Make sure you set the correct multilangv2 setting for that matter.
It would make sense to allow you, from the interface, to map to which sub language you wish to save your translation. Let us know if this is a real need by submitting a GITHUB issue.
The source language will be set to the actual Moodle language selection, which will automatically set it as the other fallback language.
nb: In a future release you'll be able to assign the other fallback language to your choosing for more flexibility.
To change the source language you'd change Moodle's lang. It is important, from a translation standpoint, to select the source language from the language it was initially written (and to stick with it).
When first translating your content the plugin will insert {mlang other}Your Content...{mlang} tags .
Please checkout the mlang docs if you are not familiar with Moodle's MLANG concept more.
To change the language you want to translate to, choose a language from the Target language {mlang XX} dropdown. Note: indeed you cannot translate from and to the same language so buttons and checkboxes would be disabled if so.
Language that are not supported by ©DeepL are checked at each session so if your Moodle instance have unsupported languages, you will not be able to select it.
You can filter the rows to hide/show the ones that need to be translated as wished. Clicking on the "Status" checkbox will select all visible.
These filter show/hide the textual content found in the course.
These are the content that are already translated and that no change were made in the source.
They will appear with the GREEN DOT indicator.
These are the textual contents that were never translated or that were modified after being translated.
They appear with the RED DOT indicator when they were never translated.
They appear with the ORANGE DOT indicator when they were already translated but the source text change since.
Hidden:
NEW since 1.5.0
Toggle this filter to show/hide hidden (to users) sections or modules.
NEW since 1.5.0
When you scroll down the breadcrumbs status give you an indication on where you are in the course.
_ in the expl below we are editing the 'Question text' field of the multichoice question titled 'Multi choice ABC' of the quiz 'Test MDL-84560' located in the course's
'Quizzes' section.
Each row has a little colored dot to indicate a status:
- Red -> This field was never translated. (no {mlang xx} tag for the xx target language found)
- Green -> The filed was already translated and up to date (in the target language).
- Orange -> This field was translated but there were some updates made in the Database. (Needs a review)
It is not possible to edit the source content from this plugin's interface. Nevertheless, clicking on the PENCIL icon will jump you to the regular place for you to do so.
_
Clicking on the TRANSLATION icon will toggle the display of multilang tags and all available translations.
The plugin will try to fetch and display embedded images. (this should be improved soon so that image are displayed in the source) When not found it will highlight the alt text in yellow and italicised as seen above.
- The text is not selected. No translation will occur. ( ... )
- The text is selected but not sent to ©DeepL yet. (hourglass)
- By default, the main source language is selected. It will be stored within {mlang other}* tag.
- You set another language as source if your content had some content written in different lang. It will be stored within {mlang xx}* tag.
- Translation is retrieved from ©DeepL and filed in the text editor. (floppy)
- Now the translator can review ©DeepL's work and amend the translation if necessary.
- Once happy with the content a click on the floppy button will save the text.
(Save all saves all selected translations by batch)
- Translation is saved in the database, with the {mlang} filter surrounding it. (DB icon)
_Note* the following process when saving to the database _
The original content has no MLANG tag and the source lang is the main:
{mlang other}SOURCE_CONTENT{mlang} {mlang target_lang}TRANSLATED_CONTENT{mlang}
The original content has no MLANG tag and the source lang is different from the main:
{mlang other}SOURCE_CONTENT{mlang} {mlang special_source_lang}SOURCE_CONTENT{mlang} {mlang target_lang}TRANSLATED_CONTENT{mlang}
The original content has already MLANG tag and the source lang is the main:
{mlang other}SOURCE_CONTENT{mlang} {mlang target_lang}TRANSLATED_CONTENT{mlang}
The original content has already MLANG tag and the source lang is different from the main and there were no {mlang other}:
{mlang other}SOURCE_CONTENT{mlang} {mlang special_source_lang}SOURCE_CONTENT{mlang} {mlang target_lang}TRANSLATED_CONTENT{mlang}
The original content has already MLANG tag and the source lang is different from the main and there were already a {mlang other:
{mlang other}ANOTHER_SOURCE{mlang} {mlang special_source_lang}SOURCE_CONTENT{mlang} {mlang target_lang}TRANSLATED_CONTENT{mlang}
Content's texts fields are displayed in the order of appearance of the course. A module (course settings, topics etc.) separator corresponding to the activities grouping is displayed with its title, underneath you can see it available for translation.
Note that: for now, the naming of the instances as well ads the fields are the DB ones, it will soon be replaced by the one used in Moodle's course layout for a better usability.
You can install a tour guide to simplify your translators' trainings.
See Moodle's instructions here : User tours
Activities/resources with complex sub content may not all work. We currently plan to support all the core mods and would be happy to add more (send us a PR) Book does, wiki too but beware when translating [[links]] as it will break the page link. (this should be fixed in future releas)
At this time, Deepler does not have the ability to translate advanced usage of mlang in content. For example, this includes the use of multiple mlang tags spread throughout content that utilize the same language._
Note: Still you can add untranslated content, after a first insertion of mlang tags, before and/or after, the parser should then leave them in place.
Currently, images are only displayed in the preview but not in the text editor. Instead, the alt attribute content is highlighted. The Alt attribute is not sent to ©DeepL. This should be added in further improvement for better accessibility.
question's image are still not displayed we are getting there...
This plugin has been tested on Moodle 4.1+ php >= 8.1
Should work with the following editors:
- Plaintext
- Atto
- Tiny°
- Marklar
°Tiny editor has an autosave function by default. This can be annoying/puzzling when you switch languages and see the previous language cached in the textarea. Until we find a satisfying way to disable that behaviour from the plugin. As a Moodle admin disabling AutoSave from Admin>Plugins>Text-Editors>TinyMCE>General settings.
It uses the default Moodle JS library and is tested with Boost and Classic. So there could be incompatibilities with other themes.
see Coding, Debugging and Contributing should you intend to help improving this plugin or just should you be an admin and want to do some test in a dedicated sandbox.
This plugin will add a local_deepler_update_translation web service for the translation page to perform ajax requests against.
This plugin does not translate every string on your site. It is only meant for translating courses and Questions. It uses Moodle's built-in multilingual features along with {mlang} to
translate your content. When you backup and restore courses, your translations will migrate with your content. Updating your source content will provide a "Update Needed" status
message on the course translation page.
- Machine translation API abstraction to use other services than ©DeepL.
- Display images all times.
- Translations versioning.
- Import glossaries.
- Multiple API key setting and user mapping.
- Document translation.
Please submit issues here.
See the CHANGES.md documentation.
This plugin relies on javascript. So if you set test environment with Moodle's debugging features, make sure debugdisplay (Display debug messages) is set to 'No'. This because as debugdisplay breaks the xhtml. So message from elsewhere could break the process.
On the other hand with debug (Debug messages) there is already a comprehensive messaging that should inform you what is going wrong with the plugin's process. Depending on the level DEVELOPPER, ALL, NORMAL, MINIMAL or NONE, the plugin's debugging messages adapt to it.
Check your browser's dev tools (F12) to see the detailed logs.
https://github.com/brunobaudry/moodle-local_deepler/issues
Make sure you describe:
- Your environment (PHP, Moodle version, database, browser used etc.)
- The current behaviour.
- The expected behaviour.
Pull requests, adhering to Moodle's coding guidelines, are welcome !
See the CONTRIBUTING.md default documentation, for how-to with GIT and github and push some code.
This plugins tries to have descent testing setup.
Some additional PHPUNIT, as well as BEHAT test can run be done provided you have a valid key. rename .env-dist to .env and set there your own api key DEEPL_API_TOKEN=DEFAULT DEEPL_API_TOKEN=YOUR_OWN_DEEPL_API_KEY (You can add both a pro or a free key, we recommend that you do the tests with a free one).
If you intend to test in your forked repo this code with Moodle CI. Ensure you also add a Repository secret with the DEEPL_API_TOKEN (as with the .env) (Repo > Settings > Security > Secrets and variable > Actions > New repository secret)
Originally a fork of Jamfire's https://github.com/jamfire/moodle-local_coursetranslator, this plugin had lots of refactoring and UI changes. Should you prefer a fully automated Deepl translation. Checkout Jamfire's replacement plugin :
https://github.com/jamfire/moodle-filter_autotranslate It is text filter, most probably the best way for fast auto-translation (populating the result without intervention), we found useful to improve this one adding the necessary "revision" step as Machine translation will never be 100% accurate specially in the context of knowledge transmission where accuracy is mandatory.