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Language Packs

Language packs are sets of text files and images that are used to display Blackboard LMS in a specific language. Language packs are composed of two components: user interface (UI) text and help. The Blackboard LMS calendar displays the most common convention for the first day of the week based on a user's selected language. You can change your language in the user profile. Administrators can customize the first day of the week for their language pack if they choose.

User interface text

The UI text includes course- and institution-related information as well as information about how to perform specific tasks within the system. While any custom language pack could be created, Blackboard LMS provides full UI translation for these languages:

  • Arabic (ar_SA)*

  • Azerbajani (AZ)

  • Chinese, Simplified (zh_CN)

  • Chinese, Traditional (zh_TW)

  • Czech (cs_CZ)

  • Danish (da_DK)

  • Dutch (nl_NL)

  • English, Australia (en_AU)

  • English, United Kingdom (en_GB)

  • English, United States (en_US)

  • French, Canada (fr_CA)

  • French, France (fr_FR)

  • German (de_DE)

  • Hebrew (he_IL)*

  • Italian (it_IT)

  • Japanese (ja_JP)

  • Korean (ko_KO)

  • Malay (ms_MY)

  • Norwegian, Bokmål (nb_NO)

  • Norwegian, Nynorsk (nn_NO)

  • Portuguese, Brazilian (pt_BR)

  • Polish (pl_PL)

  • Portuguese, Portugal (pt_PT)

  • Russian (ru_RU)

  • Spanish (es_ES)

  • Swedish (sv_SE)

  • Thai (th_TH)

  • Turkish (tr_TR)

  • Ukrainian (uk_UA)

  • Welsh (cy_GB)

* With availability of Right-To-Left support.

Blackboard Help

Blackboard Help, where you are now, includes all reference materials that accompany Blackboard LMS. In addition to English, you can also get the information on this help site in other languages. To view the help that is available in your language, select an option in the upper-right corner of this page.

Enable and manage a language pack

Access installed language packs through Administrator Panel > Tools and Utilities > Language Packs. Locate the language pack you're looking for and open its menu. Select Manage to edit settings.

  • System Availability: Make this language available for use in your Blackboard LMS environment.

  • Language Pack Availability: Make this language available for courses, organizations, or users. When you make a language available as a user language, students and instructors can choose this user interface language if they prefer. If they don't choose a specific language, their interface uses the system default language.

  • System Default: Make the user interface text appear in this language for all users by default.

  • Ultra Language Pack: If you use the Ultra experience, you can customize strings directly within Blackboard LMS. Learn how to create and edit an Ultra locale.

You can also choose the default calendar format for this language pack.

Language packs, shared laboratories and the login page

When a language pack is made available, it will appear for selection in the globe menu on the login page. When a user logs in, the selection on the login page will automatically update their personal language pack setting.

If the user then logs off again, the language pack on the login page will be the one they were using. This results in considerations for shared computers such as those found in libraries, laboratories, or study carrels when shared operating system logins are used.

This can be illustrated with an example. Suppose that

  • The institutions' default language pack is English.

  • The administrator made Chinese and German available.

  • Let User A be Chinese and User B be German.

  • The lab computer has a single O.S. login.

Now consider the following sequence of events:

  1. User A sits down at the login page which is in English; they change it to Chinese, log in and uses Blackboard LMS in Chinese.

  2. After a while User A logs off. The login page is now displayed in Chinese. User A leaves.

  3. User B sits down and changes the language to German. User B logs in and the site is displayed in German.

  4. User B logs off. The login page now displays in German.

Now suppose user C arrives. User C speaks English and sits down at the German login page. If User C logs in without changing the language pack to English using the globe menu, User C's language pack will be changed to German. The result for User C may seem surprising. However, notice that nobody ever logs off of or on to the Operating System. As a result, the browser 'state' was never reset.

Shared operating system accounts are not a best practice. They increase the risk that users' activities will interfere with one another and introduce security hazards. Rather than use them, it is recommended to manage access to lab computers with technologies like Kerberos, SSSD or Active Directory which authenticate users to the Operating System with their own accounts typically centralized in an LDAP database. The recommended flow therefore is users first log into the Operating System, then open a browser, then log into Blackboard LMS, and finally log off of the O.S. when complete.