If I import a content for the German library I can only choose categorys in English. What happened? Some time ago, they were in German.
We had to change these categories because they were too long when they had both English and German and caused problems with the display in certain situations. We are trying to figure out the best way to translate these properly on the site. In the meantime, they will have to be in English only.
There are some learners of German which have no knowledge of English. I know that they are a minority, but English is not the best solution. I would prefer to have them in German. Only the beginner category should stay in English. But all students up from a beginner should be able to understand categories in German.
Vera,
There is no obvious best answer here. We have decided to go with all English for now since the vast majority of German learners on the site will speak some English. We know it’s not perfect but we will have to wait until the categories can be properly translated. We know it is an issue and will try and deal with it as soon as we can.
I would be in favour of having the categories translate with the interface, in other words be in the language of the learner, when we have the time to get around to it.
Steve, That would surely be the best solution.
I know you prefer solution without changing the program. As a compromise I think the Language that is learned should be understandable for all intermediate and advanced learners. That why I think it is a better solution as to change the categories in general into English. As English is your native language and widespread in the world you possibly tend to use English?
I have no problems to let the beginner categories as “Beginner I” and "Beginner II).
As long as we have drop-down menus, I suppose we have to stick to the written language (which may be translated in the near future). While I think that those terms can be learned in a few minutes, maybe pictures could represent the categories in the actual library. A football for “sports”, a book for “literature”, a treble-clef/theatre masks for “entertainment”, and so on.
But, I’m not really suggesting this since graphics sometimes seem to confuse people even more (see the discussion we had a while ago, where it showed that some people hadn’t a clue what to do with the mp3 player, flashcards, pen+paper and headset icons…).