[Translators-l] [Wikitech-l] An update on localisation inMediaWiki

[Siebrand Mazeland]

Hi Wegge,

Thank you for your clarification. No system is perfect. I am of the opinion though that Translate can give more insight and information which leads to a more effective and efficient translation process than keeping an eye on SVN commits. Our opinions differ, obviously, so no need to elaborate on that. Instead, I chose to inform you. Please read on.

Extension Translate currently offers a way to add translation help in the language 'qqq'. Those hints are displayed in the Betawiki UI and are also exported to the .po files for offline translation. If the translation help is written correctly, translators would have all the context they need. All this is being done 'wiki-style', so improvements must be made and are being made.

An example of a translation hint is http://translatewiki.net/wiki/MediaWiki:Undeletelink/qqq for a message that was added recently.

Currently 588 of 1766 core messages have some form of documentation[1]. For extensions 99 messages have been documented. Making the sets complete is a lot of work. Currently about 10-15 messages are documented every week[2]. I would love more developer types like you to contribute on localisation by adding message documentation (basically it is a part of i18n). Please see this as an invitation. Anyone with the translator role can add such messages in Betawiki.

An example of a translation hint in Translate context can be seen at http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Image:Translation_hint_example.png. Additional fallback languages while translating are a second instrument we use to make life easier for translators[3].

I hope I have given you and others some additional insight in the workings of Betawiki with the above.

Cheers! Siebrand

[1] http://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special%3ATranslate&task=reviewall&group=core&language=qqq&limit=100
[2] http://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?days=14&limit=250&title=Special%3ARecentchanges&namespace=8&trailer=%2Fqqq
[3] http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Image:Translation_fallback_example.png