Choosing in the panel

  1. Sign in to /admin as the server owner.
  2. Open the menu with the globe icon and the current language. On a phone, the icon shows RU or EN next to it.
  3. Choose Русский or English. The current language has a check mark. The menu reminds you: Changes for everyone on this server.
  4. Wait for the server to confirm: the interface switches and the menu closes. If the change can't be confirmed, the menu stays open with a message and a Try again button.

The setting covers the whole server: the teacher panel, sign-in screens, class rooms, the console and published pages. Only the owner can change it; teachers and students have no language choice of their own.

Classes in progress

Connected rooms switch language without reloading. Code, cursor positions and unsaved form fields stay as they are. Other open app pages, that is, the panel and reading pages, check the setting every five minutes, and also when you return to the tab if more than five minutes have passed since the last check. Other tabs in the same browser switch at once. Without a connection, the browser keeps the last known language.

What gets translated

Labels, buttons, hints, new Colloq messages, dates and counters switch language. Class titles, participant names, code, files, student answers and conversations stay as they were written. Python output and messages from external services also stay exactly as their source returned them.

The oracle uses the chosen language as its default answer language; you can ask for another one in the question itself. Answers already given, check results and history entries are not rewritten. A static export of published materials keeps the language it was built in; to change it, export and publish it again. The public site colloq.ru and these docs don't depend on your server's setting; switch the docs language with RU · EN in the docs header.

The server's initial setting

The default is Russian. The exception is a class on your own computer after pip install colloq: the first colloq start writes UI_LANGUAGE=en to ~/.colloq/.env; when you run from source, it writes UI_LANGUAGE=ru.

Until the owner first picks a language in the panel, you can set UI_LANGUAGE=ru or UI_LANGUAGE=en in the app configuration. Restart the app after changing the variable; for a local class, run colloq restart.

The owner's choice is stored in the database and takes priority over UI_LANGUAGE. It survives restarts, updates and restoring the database from a backup. It is not a per-room or per-browser setting.