[Translators-l] a suggestion to migrate translations to the Translate extension

[Amir E. Aharoni]

2011/3/26 KIZU Naoko <aphaia at gmail.com>:
> Respectfully disagreed, Amir, that was not perfectly suited.
>
> For example, "First" and "Last" variables in the language page were
> translated literally which had been meant first and last names in some
> language (I wouldn't like to mention what it was, it's a bit
> embarassment, eh?) - and a certain donor complained to otrs that they
> were meaningless. I'd have liked it were easier in twn to view a
> certain valuable would be used in which context, if MediaWiki
> developers could not avoid their anglocentric attitude totally; it
> couldn't happen when these valuables had been named "name" and
> "surname".

Indeed - the writers of the original English should choose expressions
that are as unambiguous as possible. I wrote about it in a thread on
foundation-l very recently

Sometimes even that doesn't help, but the Translate extension has a
structured solution for it: the message can be documented and the
documentation will explain the context. Here are, for example, all the
documented messages for MediaWiki:
http://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special%3ATranslate&task=view&group=core&language=qqq

And here is a translation page for a message, with the displayed
documentation: http://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=MediaWiki:Passwordremindertext/ja&action=edit&loadgroup=core&loadtask=view

The writers of the English text need to write comments for the
localizers in any case; The Translate extension makes it easier and
more structured both for the writers and the translators.

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
"We're living in pieces,
 I want to live in peace." - T. Moore