Incubator:Translation project
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In other languages | English · magyar · Zazaki | [[Incubator:Translation project#Version | (2.0)]] |
We host Wikimedia projects, in a variety of languages, before they would be ready to launch independently. Many of our editors do not understand English, but may speak another major language well enough. You can help them with accurate translations, but machine translations are not allowed.
This is an overview of our translation efforts.
Goals
editWe aim to translate the interface and a few site-wide project pages.
- Interface translation takes place on Translatewiki.net and affects all MediaWiki sites. Interface elements are mirrored in the MediaWiki namespace. Details: Help:Manual#Step 5: Localisation.
- A few Incubator-specific MediaWiki pages are stored locally.
- Project pages describe how Incubator works and are in the Project or Help namespaces.
Exceptions:
- Sometimes policies and related discussions are on the same page. The discussions are seldom translated, but the policy part can be. (See: Incubator:Administrators)
- On the Community Portal, we tend to use world languages. You can help your language community by translating their requests there - a world language has a better chance of being understood by others. This is not a translation project priority, but a gesture towards your fellow editors.
- Your testproject can set its own policies, which is a task for its community. Use prefixes to distinguish these from site-wide policies.
Local translations
editNaming conventions
editWe store most translations on subpages. If the English source page is namespace:pagename, then its translation will be namespace:pagename/ISOcode. Each language has an ISO code. (See: prefix).
Translate extension
editThe Translate extension allows us to:
- translate the source text in little parts which are less overwhelming to work on;
- tally outdated translations, if the source text changes;
- allow edits in the generally protected MediaWiki namespace;
- display a translated title;
- review translations.
The extension stores the translations in the Translations namespace. Each part has its own language subpages: Translations:namespace:pagename/partnumber/ISOcode.
The translated page, when displayed, appears to be continuous and follows the source layout. Parts, which are not yet translated, appear in their original language. Outdated translations are highlighted.
Usage
editTranslation administrators mark pages for translation through the extension.
The extension offers an interface for easy translation, which you can access via:
- the marked page: click on “Translate this page” link on the top of the page near the language menu;
- Special:LanguageStats, a list of marked pages by target language. Choose a language, then a page from the list to see its parts;
- if you can’t find your ISO code, consult the manual. If too many core messages are missing, your language will not appear, and you will have to start with translating on translatewiki.net.
- Special:MessageGroupStats which shows the translations of a given marked page.
Save each translation by clicking on the Publish translation button. You may navigate between the parts, but unsaved ones will be lost when you refresh the page. You can filter the list by status (outdated, translated, unreviewed). Outdated translations are highlighted.
Tips
edit- Upon finishing, glance through the whole page. Make sure that each part is translated with a consistent style and word usage throughout the page.
- Don’t translate MediaWiki page titles, as these display titles, in practice, are never shown.
- Pages are not accessible through the display title. (I.e. the search box won’t return results for the translated title.)
- You may append the original title in brackets
(namespace:pagename/code)behind the translated one to remind your readers. (Example: Incubator:About/hu.)
- You may append the original title in brackets
- Do not translate page titles in links, they will not work.
- Link translated versions (subpages) directly. For a French page, link [[Help:FAQ/fr]] instead of [[Help:FAQ]].
- You may change the link text as described on w:en:Help:Introduction to editing with Wiki Markup/3. On a French page, for example, you may use [[Help:Manual/fr|Help:Manuel]] instead of [[Help:Manual/fr]].
- You may link the reader’s preferred language like this: [[Special:MyLanguage/Help:FAQ]].
- Shortcuts do not work with
Special:MyLanguageor by attaching ISO codes to them. Replace shortcuts with the proper name of the target page.
- Shortcuts do not work with
- Section headers should be translated exactly as they are given on the target page. A French example would be: [[Help:Manual/fr#Étape 1 : Prérequis]] instead of [[Help:Manual#Step 1: Requirements]]. If the section names in the link and the target page mismatch, the link will still work, but it will not jump to the given section.
- Link translated versions (subpages) directly. For a French page, link [[Help:FAQ/fr]] instead of [[Help:FAQ]].
- Links sometimes appear as
$variables. Test how they would fit your translation, so that they will not disrupt text flow.
Versions
editTranslation administrators have to approve source page changes, before they would appear in the extension. This might take some time.
Each part has its borders marked in the source version. When this partition changes, hidden fuzzy messages will appear in the translated text. Remove them after you have made sure that the translations correspond with the source text.
Notifications
editUsers can sign up for notifications through Special:TranslatorSignup. Admins can send such notifications through Special:NotifyTranslators, but this feature is rarely used.
Regular subpages
editSome project pages are not important enough to be marked for translation, but you can still translate them using the old method: create a subpage like this: namespace:pagename/ISOcode. In these cases, a subpage contains a whole translated page or header.
Incubator and Help namespaces
editIn these namespaces, you can freely create subpages. When you translate a page:
- the links should point to the translated versions of other pages, if they exist. Links without a language code lead to the English page. See also: #Tips;
- insert the
{{Translations}}template on the top of the subpage. Add this to the original English page, if it does not have it already. It allows an easy switch between languages. Use its "version" parameter to distinguish between up-to-date and outdated translations: borrow the version number from the page you are translating from. If you update the translation because a change in the source, update the version number. (When a significant change is made to the source, its version should be upped.)
Templates
editIf you want to translate a template, you should ask an administrator to create the subpage for you. Normal users are not able to create non-prefixed pages/templates.
MediaWiki namespace
edit- See also: Special:AllMessages.
Our sidebar, parts of the main page and some templates use certain MediaWiki pages (or so-called messages). Users can set their preferred interface language, which then determines which localized MediaWiki pages will appear for said user.
- The not-yet-translated MediaWiki messages will be borrowed from the fallback language, which can be set for each language separately by developers. The default is English. However, in the case of Cajun French, it had been set to French (see: rev:92418 and rev:92419).
Most messages are on translatewiki.net now, but there are some local ones still. The editinterface right is needed to edit/create subpages in the MediaWiki namespace:
- you can request to become a translator to have this right; or
- you can ask administrators on their noticeboard to perform edits for you in that namespace. This is the preferred way. Of course, you still have to supply the translations in this case.
- Before making a request, please check on translatewiki.net whether the text is available there for translation or not.
Do not use the {{Translations}} template on translated MediaWiki pages.
Global translations
editYou can translate most of our MediaWiki messages on translatewiki.net. See these categories:
Our project pages and templates sometimes link to corresponding pages on Meta. For example, we use their speedy deletion criteria. Meta uses the same Translate extension as we do; some project pages are worth translating there, but that is not our primary focus here.
Translatable pages
editA far-from-complete list, somewhat sorted by importance.
Language priority
editThere are certain priority languages which are going to be used more because of their wide acceptance as second languages.
- For us, a language is important, if it has many speakers who do not have a Wikimedia project in their own languages yet. Using common sense, we determined these to be the UN official languages, Bengali, Hindi and Portuguese. These happen to be most spoken languages on Earth. German is a major language, but translating to German is not a priority here, as most languages of Germany, Switzerland and Austria have their own wikis already.
- To avoid languages being thrown around in categories, we discuss changes on the Community Portal first. Do not take this classification too seriously though, as it has no real importance.
Regional languages and dialects have limited importance to outsiders: translation into them is not encouraged, but nevertheless welcome.
Important pages per language
editVertically sorted by language importance and language code, and horizontally by page importance. Those displayed in italics are system messages (i.e. MediaWiki pages).
Priority languages
editNormal priority
edit| We do not recommend you to translate into these languages unless you want to keep the pages up-to-date. |
Regional languages and dialects
edit| We do not recommend you to translate into these languages unless you want to keep the pages up-to-date. These languages are not likely to have a wide array of speakers among our target population, so these translations will be useful only to a specific community. Once their project gets its own wiki, it is likely that these translations will fall into disuse. |
History
editThe Incubator launched on 2 June 2006. Before October 2007 there were no translations.
We turned on our login language selector in 2007. It was a precursor to translations as it enabled changing some links in the sidebar.
In 2008, we adapted the Transcom’s concept of language priority. In 2011, supporting the Foundation’s ongoing expansion projects in India, we added Bengali and Hindi to the priority languages.
We installed the Translate extension on 6 February 2012. Before that, translations had to be made on manually created subpages. You may track which pages were marked for translations here.
The translator group was introduced in 2008 to allow edits in the MediaWiki namespace without admin rights. Requests for this right were handled on Template:Test wiki/translations until 10 August 2010, but since then we moved this section to Incubator:Administrators#Other requests. Since then most of our MediaWiki messages were moved to Translatewiki, and as of 2021, we have no users with translator rights.