Over the years, we have received occasional questions about how OpenLabyrinth can support virtual scenarios in languages other than English. Since OpenLabyrinth is used widely around the world, we are keen to explore a less anglocentric approach.

Now, as we have noted before (More languages in OpenLabyrinth cases), the node and page content in OpenLabyrinth is quite flexible. We have authors who have written cases in Greek, Russian, Slovak, French and even Klingon.

We have also had groups explore the use of right-to-left languages, with some success. For a quick look at how a case might look, check out this case on our demo server, Multi-lingual cases, which shows what can be done.

Ever since OpenLabyrinth v2.6.1, we have had some basic internationalization functions built into the code base. If you select French in your User Profile, you will see that the top level menus are rendered in French. But sadly, that is as far as it goes – no group has yet funded the code writing needed to take it further, with i18n tables and the like. So this is feasible – if anyone wants to take a crack at this, the source code for OpenLabyrinth is all up on GitHub.

Now it is also pretty easy to have the menu and button labels changed, using Google Translate. Here are some quick screen shots taken of the main authoring menu for https://demo.openlabyrinth.ca/renderLabyrinth/index/60 Multi-lingal cases:

Original (EN)

Francophone (FR)

Espagnol (ES)

Greek

Russian

Farsi (Persian)

Please let us know what you think in the comments below, or if you have strong suggestions, use the Contact page.