Get ready, steady and go for a Greek Moodle editathon!

February 14, 2018

We know that Moodle is used in every country in the world right?

We also know, as part of our mission to empower educators to improve our world we need to work together to make Moodle accessible for our large global community.

This means translating Moodle!

Available in English by default, Moodle relies on the contribution of its volunteer language packs maintainers to make it available in many languages. Our volunteers aim to translate over 23,000 phrases (or strings) for each language.

At the end of last year, a total of 1,231,693 strings have been translated by community members and submitted into AMOS, the translation tool that we use for Moodle.

And the efforts to make Moodle available continues, with a Greek editathon being organised by the team at GFOSS – an organisation of Open Technologies in Greece contributing to raising public awareness of the benefits of using and developing Free Software, Open Source and Open Architecture Technologies!

So what exactly is a Greek editathon and how will it contribute to making Moodle more accessible globally?

Let’s chat to one of the main organisers, Kostas Papadimas about it all.

Moodle HQ: Thanks for taking the time to talk to us Kostas. Can you describe what a Greek editathon is all about?

Kostas: The translation Editathon is an event that will bring together Greek Moodle community to contribute to an open source project, in this case Moodle. During the days of the editathon, educators, students and members of the Greek open source community will join forces to translate and review the Greek translation of Moodle 3.5.

Moodle HQ: Why are you and the team at GFOSS organising this? What are your driving reasons or objectives? And what results would you like to achieve?

Kostas: Open Technologies Alliance, (www.gfoss.eu), is a non- profit organisation, founded in 2008. Our main goals are to promote openness through the use and the development of open standards and open technologies in education, public administration and business in Greece.

Thirty five Greek universities and research centers are shareholders of GFOSS, while leading
members of the Greek community of developers play a key role in the implementation of our
Policies.

Moodle is used in hundreds Greek Schools and a complete translation will be extremely useful to students and educators. We will organising this event in order to improve the quantity and the quality in the Greek Moodle translation. MoodleMoot Greece 2017 brought together the Greek Moodle community. Editathon is a great opportunity for mobilising users and developers that want to contribute to Moodle.

Moodle HQ: When is the Greek editathon happening and how will it work across various cities of Greece? Who else is involved in this?

Kostas: We are still making arrangements in order to finalize the dates, as the call for contributors is still open.

We are also in touch with our members (https://gfoss.eu/gfoss-member-organizations/) in order to host the Editathon in their cities (computer labs of schools or universities).

Moreover, we have set up the pootle translation platform so that all the volunteers will translate in the same time in various Greek cities.

Moodle HQ: Lastly, for those who would like to be part of the Greek editathon for Moodle, how can they get involved? Or find out more information?

Kostas: More information about the editathon is available here and they can express their interest by completing the online form here.

Alternatively they can sign up here and contribute at their own pace.

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Thanks very much Kostas for sharing more information on the Greek editathon – it sounds exciting!

If you also want to contribute to Moodle translations, we would love to get your help!

Check out our translations article for easy steps to get involved.