How do I specify a student's home language (if other than English)?

Specifying which language a student (or his/her parents) speaks at home can be helpful for teachers when they reach out to families, or when you want Schoolrunner to auto-translate report cards into the right language.

To enable auto-translation and show home languages to your staff, follow these steps (more details on each below):

1. Set up a student attribute that indicates a student's home language.
   • Make sure it shows up on student profiles.
2. Ensure the attribute is populated for individual students.
   • Use language codes as defined by Google Translate.
   • Be sure to enter the translation codes in all lower case (Google is particular about this).
   • Ignore this step for kids whose home language is English.
3. Select the attribute in the "Report Cards" section on the Settings page.

Set Up an Attribute to Indicate a Student's Home Language

This can be done directly in Schoolrunner. Follow the steps outlined in this article. Call the attribute something like "Home Language" and make sure to configure it to show in one of the "Display Groups" so that teachers can see this in the website and mobile app.

If you already sync in something like this from your SIS, you can use that field but you may need to adjust values to match Google Translate's language codes if you want to take advantage of automatic report card translation.

Ensure the Attribute Is Populated for Individual Students

If a student's home language is English, you don't need to do anything.

But for students whose home language is anything other than English, fill out your new "Home Language" attribute with the appropriate language code (be sure to enter the code exactly as formatted to ensure report card translation works correctly).

This article goes over how to export a summary of student home language attributes, how to enter or edit values, and how to upload them into Schoolrunner. (It also talks about how to create groups based on your attribute; you don't have to do that if you don't want.)

Select the Attribute in "Report Cards" Settings

Once you've created a place for Schoolrunner to show student home languages and you've filled in that field for kids, visit your Settings page. In the "Translation – Home Language Field" in the "Report Cards" section, select the attribute that holds home languages. Save your work.

When you visit the Report Cards page, you'll see that your new attribute is selected by default in the "Translation" menu. Based on this, when you generate report cards, Schoolrunner will automatically select the right language for translation on a student-by-student basis!

This means that it only takes one click to generate report cards for an entire class of kids, with kids getting – as appropriate – a Spanish translation, a Korean translation, a Polish translation, or no translation at all.

 

What to Expect

Schoolrunner uses Google Translate to interpret report card comments, titles, headings, standard descriptions, and other details. These languages are available. Schoorunner will generate a standard report card in English and then generate the same report card again in the translated language. This is to provide parents and students with the original content in case the translation isn't 100% accurate.

Click here to learn about controlling if/how certain words and phrases are translated.

Translation in Schoolrunner is only directly built into report cards right now. Click here to learn how your staff or parents can enable webpage translation on their own through Chrome's built-in feature.