View source for Incubator:Translation project

{{Translations|version=2.0|<noinclude>forced_inclusion=yes|<noinclude/>margin-bottom=0.5em}}{{shortcut|I:TP}}
We [[Incubator:About|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 ==
We aim to translate the interface and a few site-wide project pages.
*Interface translation takes place on [http://translatewiki.net Translatewiki.net] and affects [[Special:SiteMatrix|all MediaWiki sites]]. Interface elements are mirrored in the ''MediaWiki'' [[Incubator:Policy#Usage of namespaces|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 [[Incubator:Community Portal|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 [[Help:FAQ#Prefix|prefixes]] to distinguish these from site-wide policies.

== Local translations ==
=== Naming conventions ===
We store most translations on [[mw:Help:Subpages|subpages]]. If the English source page is <code>namespace:pagename</code>, then its translation will be <code>namespace:pagename/ISOcode</code>. Each language has an [[Incubator:ISO 639|ISO code]]. (See: [[I:PREFIX|prefix]]).

=== Translate extension ===
The [[mw:extension:Translate|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*tally outdated translations, if the source text changes;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: <code>Translations:namespace:pagename/partnumber/ISOcode</code>.

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<!-- does it handle fallback languages? -->. Outdated translations are highlighted.

==== Usage ====
[[Incubator:Administrators#Translators & translation administrators|Translation administrators]] mark pages for translation through the extension.

[[File:Translate manual - Page example - 19. Documentation.png|right|thumb|The translation interface]]
The extension offers an interface for easy translation, which you can access via:
*the marked page: click on “''{{:MediaWiki:Translate-tag-translate-link-desc}}''” 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 [[Help:Manual#Step 5: Localisation|manual]]. If too many core messages are missing, your language will not appear, and you will have to start with translating on [http://translatewiki.net translatewiki.net].
*[[Special:MessageGroupStats]] which shows the translations of a given marked page.

Save each translation by clicking on the {{:MediaWiki:Tux-editor-save-button-label}} 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 ====
*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.)<!-- maybe we should allow redirects -->
**You may append the original title in brackets <code>(namespace:pagename/code)</code> behind the translated one to remind your readers. (Example: [[Incubator:About/hu]].)
*Do not translate page titles in links, they will not work.
**Link translated versions (subpages) directly. For a French page, link <nowiki>[[Help:FAQ/fr]]</nowiki> instead of <nowiki>[[Help:FAQ]]</nowiki>.
***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 <nowiki>[[Help:Manual/fr|Help:Manuel]]</nowiki> instead of <nowiki>[[Help:Manual/fr]]</nowiki>.
**You may link the reader’s preferred language like this: <nowiki>[[Special:MyLanguage/Help:FAQ]]</nowiki>.
***[[w:en: Wikipedia:Shortcut|Shortcuts]] do not work with <code> Special:MyLanguage </code> or by attaching ISO codes to them. Replace shortcuts with the proper name of the target page.
**Section headers should be translated exactly as they are given on the target page. A French example would be: <nowiki>[[Help:Manual/fr#Étape 1 : Prérequis]]</nowiki> instead of <nowiki>[[Help:Manual#Step 1: Requirements]]</nowiki>. 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.
*Links sometimes appear as <code>$variables</code>. Test how they would fit your translation, so that they will not disrupt text flow.

==== Versions ====
Translation 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 ====
Users can sign up for notifications through [[Special:TranslatorSignup]]. Admins can send such notifications through [[Special:NotifyTranslators]], but this feature is  [[Special:Log/notifytranslators|rarely used]].

=== Regular subpages ===
Some project pages are not important enough to be marked for translation, but you can still translate them using the ''old method'': create a [[mw:Help:Subpages|subpage]] like this: <code>namespace:pagename/ISOcode</code>. In these cases, a subpage contains a whole translated page or header.

==== Incubator and Help namespaces ==== <!-- linked to from the History section -->
In 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 {{tl|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 ====
If you want to translate a template, you should [[I:AN|ask an administrator]] to create the subpage for you. Normal users are not able to create non-prefixed pages/templates.<!-- See: [[User talk:Vito Genovese]] -->

==== MediaWiki namespace ====
:''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 [[Special:Preferences|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 [http://translatewiki.net translatewiki.net] now, but there are some local ones still. The <code> editinterface </code> right is needed to edit/create subpages in the [[w:Help:MediaWiki namespace|MediaWiki namespace]]:
*you can request to become a [[I:Translator|translator]] to have this right; or
*you can ask administrators on their [[I:AN|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 [http://translatewiki.net translatewiki.net] whether the text is available there for translation or not.
Do not use the {{tl|Translations}} template on translated MediaWiki pages.

== Global translations ==
You can translate most of our MediaWiki messages on [http://translatewiki.net translatewiki.net]. See these categories:
*[https://translatewiki.net/wiki/Special:Translate?group=core-0-mostused most used MediaWiki messages];
*[http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Special:Translate?group=ext-wikimediaincubator Incubator-specific MediaWiki messages];
*[http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Special:Translate?group=ext-wikimediaincubatorinfopage infopage translations].

Our project pages and templates sometimes link to corresponding pages on Meta. For example, we use their [[Meta:Special:MyLanguage/Deletion policy#Criteria for speedy deletion|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 ==
A far-from-complete list, somewhat sorted by importance.

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center; width:100%;"
! Page
! Connecting MediaWiki pages
! Additional info
|-
| [[Incubator:Main Page]] 
| [[MediaWiki:Featuredwikis-approved]] <br/>[[MediaWiki:Featuredwikis-active]] <br/>[[MediaWiki:Featuredwikis-permanent]]
| width="50%" | See in the [[Special:Translate/page-Incubator:Main Page|Translate extension]].
|-
| [[Help:Manual]]
| -
| See in the [[Special:Translate/page-Help:Manual|Translate extension]].
|-
| [[Help:Contents]]
| -
| See in the [[Special:Translate/page- Help:Contents|Translate extension]].
|-
| {{tl|Welcome}}
| -
| See {{tl|Welcome-translate}}. 
|-
| [[Help:FAQ]]
| -
| See in the [[Special:Translate/page-Help:FAQ|Translate extension]].
|-
| [[Help:Editing]]
| -
| See in the [[Special:Translate/page-Help:Editing|Translate extension]].
|-
| [[Incubator:Upload]]
| -
| Upload has been disabled on Incubator, and [[MediaWiki:Sidebar-upload-url]] redirects to Commons. 
<br/> See in the [[Special:Translate/page-Incubator:Upload|Translate extension]].
|-
| <s>Sandbox</s>
| [[MediaWiki:Sidebar-sandbox]] <!-- [[MediaWiki:Sidebar-sandbox-url]] -->
| The [[Incubator:Sandbox|Sandbox]] itself does not need to be translated, as there is no useful content in it.
|-
| {{tl|Test wiki}}
| colspan="2" |
[[MediaWiki:Testwiki-coordination]] &bull;
[[MediaWiki:Testwiki-requirements]] &bull;
[[MediaWiki:Testwiki-text-approved]] &bull;
[[MediaWiki:Testwiki-text-approved-created]] &bull;
[[MediaWiki:Testwiki-text-approved-date]] &bull;
[[MediaWiki:Testwiki-text-default]] &bull;
[[MediaWiki:Testwiki-text-imported]] &bull;
[[MediaWiki:Testwiki-text-invalidcode]] &bull;
[[MediaWiki:Testwiki-text-open]] &bull;
[[MediaWiki:Testwiki-text-tocreate]] &bull;
[[MediaWiki:Testwiki-title-approved]] &bull;
[[MediaWiki:Testwiki-title-default]] &bull;
[[MediaWiki:Testwiki-title-imported]] &bull;
[[MediaWiki:Testwiki-title-invalidcode]] &bull;
[[MediaWiki:Testwiki-title-open]] &bull;
[[MediaWiki:Testwiki-title-tocreate]]
|-
| [[Incubator:Wikis]]
| 
| See in the [[Special:Translate/page-Incubator:Wikis|Translate extension]].
|-
| [[Incubator:Policy]]
| -
| Not really necessary. 
<br/> See in the [[Special:Translate/page-Incubator:Policy |Translate extension]].
|}

== Language priority ==
There 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 '''[[w:en:Official languages of the United Nations|UN official languages]]''', '''Bengali''', '''Hindi''' and '''Portuguese'''. These happen to be [[w:List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers|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 [[Incubator:Community Portal|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 ===
Vertically 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 ====
{| cellpadding="3.5" cellspacing="0" border="1" style="border:gray solid 1px; border-collapse:collapse; width:100%;"
{{/lang|ar}}
{{/lang|bn}}
{{/lang|es}}
{{/lang|fr}}
{{/lang|hi}}
{{/lang|pt}}
{{/lang|ru}}
{{/lang|zh-hans}}
{{/lang|zh-hant}}
|}

==== Normal priority ====
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center; width:100%;"
| width=''35px'' | [[Image:Warning icon.svg|25px|Attention]]
| ''We do not recommend you to translate into these languages unless you want to keep the pages up-to-date.''
|}

{| cellpadding="3.5" cellspacing="0" border="1" style="border:gray solid 1px; border-collapse:collapse; width:100%;"
{{/lang|be}}
{{/lang|bg}}
{{/lang|ca}}
{{/lang|cs}}
{{/lang|cy}}
{{/lang|de}}
{{/lang|el}}
{{/lang|fa}}
{{/lang|he}}
{{/lang|id}}
{{/lang|it}}
{{/lang|ja}}
{{/lang|jv}}
{{/lang|ka}}
{{/lang|ko}}
{{/lang|lt}}
{{/lang|lv}}
{{/lang|hu}}
{{/lang|ms}}
{{/lang|nl}}
{{/lang|nb}}
{{/lang|pl}}
{{/lang|ro}}
{{/lang|sk}}
{{/lang|sr}}
{{/lang|fi}}
{{/lang|sv}}
{{/lang|sq}}
{{/lang|ta}}
{{/lang|th}}
{{/lang|tl}}
{{/lang|tr}}
{{/lang|uk}}
{{/lang|vi}}
{{/lang|yue}}
{{/lang|mni}}
|}

==== Regional languages and dialects ====
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center; width:100%;"
| width=''35px'' | [[Image:Warning icon.svg|25px|Attention]]
| ''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.''
|}

{| cellpadding="3.5" cellspacing="0" border="1" style="border:gray solid 1px; border-collapse:collapse; width:100%;"
{{/lang|bcc}}
{{/lang|azb}}
{{/lang|bgn}}
{{/lang|diq}}
{{/lang|gsw}}
{{/lang|ksh}}
{{/lang|khw}}
{{/lang|li}}
{{/lang|lki}}
{{/lang|lrc}}
{{/lang|ltg}}
{{/lang|luz}}
{{/lang|pt-br}}
{{/lang|roa-tara}}
{{/lang|rue}}
|}

== History ==
The Incubator launched on [https://wikitech.leuksman.com/index.php?title=Server_admin_log/Archive_9&diff=prev&oldid=8764 2 June 2006]. Before October 2007 there were no translations.

We [[bugzilla:11834|turned on]] our ''login language selector'' in 2007. It was a precursor to translations as it enabled changing some links in the sidebar.

In [https://incubator.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Incubator:Translation_project&diff=next&oldid=232588 2008], we adapted the [[m:Transcom|Transcom]]’s concept of language priority. In 2011, supporting the [[meta:FAQ India Programs|Foundation’s ongoing expansion projects in India]], we added [https://incubator.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Incubator:Translation_project&diff=663124&oldid=608278 Bengali] and [https://incubator.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Incubator:Translation_project&diff=663163&oldid=663142 Hindi] to the priority languages. <!-- In [https://incubator.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Incubator:Translation_project&diff=3272926&oldid=3224745 2015], Farsi was added to the list, apparently without a discussion or an announcement. It was removed in 2020.-->

We [[phab: T36213|installed]] the [[mw:extension:Translate|Translate extension]] on 6 February 2012. Before that, translations had to be made on [[#Incubator and Help namespaces|manually created subpages]]. You may track which pages were marked for translations [[Special:Log/pagetranslation|here]].

The translator group was [[:bugzilla:15443|introduced]] in 2008 to allow edits in the MediaWiki namespace without admin rights. Requests for this right were handled on [{{fullurl:Template:Test wiki/translations|action=history}} 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 [[Special:ListUsers/translator|translator rights]].

== See also ==
* [[Template:Translations]]
* [http://translatewiki.net translatewiki.net]

[[Category:Incubator:(all)|Translation project]]