Hi all,

many thanks!

My question is: If you are going from one translated page (e.g. base page
in en, translated page in fr) to another page (in en) that has a
translation for the same language (fr), can you automatically stay in this
language? I.e. if you on [[A/fr]] you click on [[B]], can are you
automatically taken to [[B/fr]]?

Yes. Have you read the "Links" row in https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:Translate/Page_translation_administration#Markup_examples ? If it's not clear enough, please let us know. MediaWiki's assumption is that the French-speaking user of your example would also like to have the interface in French and to always read pages in French whenever possible.

I think that's our assumption too. Let assume the wiki is in en. If the users selects fr as their interface language, and clicks on a link [[page]], will they see the content of [[page/fr]] (if it exists)?

 

That's not clear to me from the above text ("If the target page is (or should be) also translatable, you should link to it by prepending Special:MyLanguage/ to its title. Only the link label will need to be translated, because this automatically redirects users to the translation page in their own interface language, as selected for instance via the UniversalLanguageSelector. However, to achieve a constant behavior the syntax must be used for all links.")

 

Our resource is quite complex (e.g. extensive use of templates, and
semantic mediawiki) see
http://oer.educ.cam.ac.uk/wiki/OER4Schools - would somebody with MLEB
experience be happy to have a chat to see whether MLEB is the right tool?

I'm extremely interested in hearing of your use case (an OER wiki), the more you tell us about it the merrier!

Thanks! Let me explain some more. Have a look at http://oer.educ.cam.ac.uk/wiki/OER4Schools/versions to see what we are trying to do. E.g. the heading reads:

Idea D: Planning for a trip to the game reserves and Victoria Falls^[Z]Masaai Mara^[K]Akagera National Park^[R]Outamba-Kilimi National Park^[S]

 

and we'd consider a page like [[.../vesions]] to be part of our "master version" that shows all variations. They are all English language but the superscripts mean:

Z = en, localised for Zambia

K = en, localised for Kenya

and similar for Rwanda, Sierra Leone.

The differences really aren't to do with language, but to do with local educational variations (such as slightly different education systems; different policies, different challenges, etc). The difference between en-Zambia and en-Kenya is probably about 5% or less I would guess.

To make it more complicated, we might soon have two versions for Zambia. The programme may be varied by different organisations, and we might have en-Zambia-UNZA and en-Zambia-Nkhana or similar (UNZA and Nkhana academy being HE institutions).

 At the moment, we haven't implemented display of localised versions yet. Our current thinking is as follows. By way of example, each page has a main version, and a participant version, 

http://oer.educ.cam.ac.uk/wiki/OER4Schools/Group_work_Same_task_and_different_tasks_group_work

http://oer.educ.cam.ac.uk/wiki/OER4Schools/Group_work_Same_task_and_different_tasks_group_work/pv

where the "pv" version only has one template on it, called {{includeparent}}, which includes the parent page. On the main page [[Group_work_Same_task_and_different_tasks_group_work]] there is basic wiki text, but also templates, such as {{ednote}}, which check the page title, and does not produce content on (sub-)pages called pv.

We were thinking of extending this to cover localisations. I.e. we were thinking of just maintaining one page [[Group_work_Same_task_and_different_tasks_group_work]], that contains localisations produced with {{Zambia|Victoria Falls}}{{Kenya|Masaai Mara}} etc, where those templates only produce content on specific pages, such as 

[[Group_work_Same_task_and_different_tasks_group_work/zm]]

[[Group_work_Same_task_and_different_tasks_group_work/rw]]

[[Group_work_Same_task_and_different_tasks_group_work/ke]]

which only contain a single template "{{includeparent}}".

It's a bit cumbersome, especially because all the 'zm', 'ke', 'rw' (as well as 'zm/pv', 'ke/pv', 'rw/pv') need to be created manually (for each basepage). Then again, that's mainly an issue for the wiki administrators (and I suppose it could be automated), while the adaptation of text for users is simple. One advantage is that the basepage can be edited freely, without upsetting the translations.

I'd basically like to work out whether we'd be better off switching to using the translate extension, or stick with the our home grown ideas.

Bjoern