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Localization

Localizing the player

The H5P player doesn't require localization as all the language strings are part of the H5P content package and must be set when creating a H5P package in the editor.

Localizing the editor

Places at which localization must happen

To change the language of the H5P editor, the text strings must be localized in several places:

  1. The core language strings (found in language/xxx.js) must be referenced in the HTML file and in the array which references the JS files in the IIntegration object (to make sure the language is also used in iframes).
  2. The H5P editor client (running in the browser) must be notified to use a certain language. It will then request the respective localized strings of H5P libraries it loads.
  3. Several string properties of IIntegration must be returned localized.
  4. The errors thrown by h5p-nodejs-library must be localized.

Some places of H5P cannot be localized at this time (this must be changed by Joubel):

  • Some strings in libraries that are hard-coded
  • The H5P Hub content list and description

Changing the language of the editor

h5p-nodejs-library supports localizing the editor as far as possible. The table shows where this must be done:

Place What to do
1. core language strings Call H5PEditor.render(contentId, language) with the language code you need.
2. notify H5P editor client Call H5PEditor.render(contentId, language) with the language code you need.
3. properties of IIntegration Pass a valid translationCallback of type ITranslationFunction to the constructor of H5PEditor
4. error messages emitted by h5p-nodejs-library Catch errors of types H5PError and AggregateH5PError and localize the message property yourself.

The Express example demonstrates how to do 1,2 and 3. The Express adapter for the Ajax endpoints already implements 4 but requires the t(...) function to be added to the req object.

The language strings used by h5p-nodejs-library all follow the conventions of i18next and it is a good library to perform the translation for cases 3 and 4. However, you are free to use whatever translation library you want as long as you make sure to pass a valid translationCallback to H5PEditor (case 3) and add the required t(...) function to req (case 4).

Initializing the JavaScript H5P client (in the browser)

The H5P client must set the H5PEditor.contentLanguage property like this to localize the libraries when the editor is initialized :

H5PEditor.contentLanguage = H5PIntegration.editor.language;

You should include this initialization routine in your "create" and "edit" views.

Language detection

While you can manually change the language used in the Express adapter with the languageOverride parameter, it is best to use a language detector, which makes sure the req.t method uses the required target language. The easiest way is to implement your own language detector in i18next as explained in their documentation. Initialize i18next with this detector (which can also simply return a hard-coded language if you want to only support one), and the Express adapter will translate to this language.

Contributing to the translation strings

H5P is constructed in a way that spreads out the localization effort. While the great majority of the language strings come packaged with the content types or are part of the H5P core (case 1 and 2 from the table), some strings must be localized by the server implementation. The Drupal, WordPress and Moodle PHP implementation all come with their own translation system and set of language strings. That's why h5p-nodejs-library must also follow this path and localize strings itself.

The language strings used by h5p-nodejs-library can be found in assets/translations. In there, each namespace (group of language strings) has it own directory, which in turn contains the language files, which are named like this en.json, de.json etc.

If you want to change the text for your language or add another language, you must do the changes in these directories. You can also add new namespaces if you want to contribute to the development of h5p-nodejs-library and develop a module which is self-contained (like the optional storage implementations). All general language strings should be put into the namespace server.