Editing the ILIAS Language Files

The ILIAS software package is delivered with all available languages as lang files. It is up to the system administrator which language she or he is installing. Languages are installed by loading them into the ILIAS database. Due to the specific structure of such a lang file, developers and language maintainers have to handle these lang files carefully. Otherwise problems migth occur when installing a language.

To offer always complete and up-to-date language files with all new entries that need to be translated, the ILIAS team has created an automatical Language Manager. For every new release the existing language files are compared with the English language file and new English entries are committed to GitHub or deprecated ones are removed. Because English is our development language the English language file ilias_en.lang contains all new and modified entries and defines the master set of language variables. Thanks to the Language Manager developers do not need to enter all new or modified language entries in all existing lang files but only in ilias_en.lang.

If a new entry has been added or an existing one modified the Language Manager will mark this entry in the language file like this:

common#:#obj_blog#:#Blog###18 01 2012 new variable

This notice after "###" tells you that this language variable has been added to this language file at that date. Now you only have to translate the language entry before '###' and delete the comment beginning with '###'.

When you edit ILIAS lang files please use an editor who supports UTF-8 perfectly to avoid the dammage of the lang files!

Getting the actual language file

The best and easiest way to get the current language file you want to modify is to checkout the current ILIAS version from our GitHub repository at https://github.com/ILIAS-eLearning/ILIAS. Then you always can be sure to have the newest version of this file. More about getting ILIAS from GitHub is described in the Development Guide!

If you want to commit your updated language files to GitHub you need to contact us for getting a write permission for the ILIAS repository. Please contact our product manager for further assistance. We thank you already very much for your contribution!

If you want to create a new language file you have to use the english lang file as master file and substitute the language coding in the file name for english 'en' by the one of the desired language, e.g. 'zu' for Zulu. Please see the ISO 639-1 list for the correct language encoding.