[Mediawiki-i18n] explaining Extension:Translate vs. Extension:ContentTranslation

[Amir E. Aharoni]

בתאריך 4 באוג׳ 2015 23:52,‏ "S Page" <spage at wikimedia.org> כתב:
>
> I have a hard time keeping them straight. As I understand it
>
> - Extension:ContentTranslation aids translation of _entire_ articles
between _separate wikis_ . If you don't visit Special:ContentTranslation
you don't notice its operation.

This is mostly right, but of course you will see the articles created with
its help as a reader and a recent changes patroller. They will also have a
tag in the revision.

>
> - Extension:Translate manages translation of article elements within a
_single multilingual wiki_  with its Special:Translate page.

I'd replace "article" with "page".

> It also presents available localizations of an article on that wiki with
its <languages> tag.

Yes, it usually goes near the top, but can be anywhere.

> Within a <languages> tag it supports <tvar|id> and <!--T:NN--> to
identify translatable elements

More precisely, the <translate> tag identifies translatable elements,
<tvar|id> identifies elements that don't need translation (usually short
ones, like URLs or numbers), and  <!--T:NN--> numbers the translatable
elements. It's possible to edit the latter, but it's strongly recommended
not to touch these techie comments and to let the software add and remove
them automatically.

> (and confuse the average wiki editor :-) ;) ).

This is sadly true, and that's why ContentTranslation was made separately.
Translate is for pages that change relatively rarely, and thar are rigidly
planned and structured, like user manuals, policies and donations landing
pages. It's (arguably!) acceptable for them to have some markup.
ContentTranslation doesn't have any translation markup in the source
article, because Wikipedia editors would rightly hate it, so it's very
flexible, though it comes at a cost of not having full certainty about the
correspondence and the synchronization between the source and the
translation.

>
> (But then how does Extension:Translate work on TranslateWiki to translate
arbitrary messages strings of non-wiki projects?)

That's what it was made for originally, before it supported page
translation. Page translation was added later - it represents a page as a
series of short chunks translatable one by one.

>
> If I'm right, https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension%3ATranslate
doesn't explain any of this. Can someone who knows Be Bold and update?

I'll try, thanks for the feedback.
>
> Thanks,
> --
> =S Page  WMF Tech writer
>
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