Bence Damokos, 21/01/2013 19:03:
IIRC, the Translate extension can only handle one
source language as the
basis of translation (so on Meta you can only use it for texts that are
originally in English). Has this been changed to work better with
multilingual content?
No, but this would be of use only for file descriptions, basically. It's
unlikely that Commons would change file descriptions to a subpage system
in the short term, especially as the UploadWizard relies on the current
system and there are still thousands of templates and perhaps hundreds
of project pages with incomplete translation.
Perhaps this may happen when metadata will be split to a subpage using
ContentHandler. <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Files_and_licenses_concept>
Jean-Frédéric, 21/01/2013 14:53:
For my little experience with the way the extension
works on Meta, I see
how it works to translate single pages, or messages assembled in a
single page − this could indeed be very useful for all our multilingual
pages (policy, help, etc.)
For pages it would be very easy to start if they don't have translations
(but have good content), and easy to start with some conversion work for
those with existing translations. Commons, as far as I've seen, doesn't
have the mess of templates Meta has (with 3 or 4 generations of
different systems) and this should help too.
Could the extension can, or be tweaked to, help with our other
multilingual content? I can think of:
* templates (whether using Autotranslate/Fallback, LangSwitch, or
special constructs like {{Technique}})
* file descriptions ?
* POTD descriptions ?
* SiteNotice announcements ?
This needs to be studies by those who know those systems better. For
file descriptions see above; {{autotranslate}} could work as is, for
what I know; LS is already deprecated and should be killed at least for
templates (multichill told me very few if any still use it, right?);
POTD I have no idea; sitenotice is a custom hack of Commons from what I
know, should work with some adaptation.
Most relevant docs are at
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:Translate/Page_translation_administration>
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:Translate/Unstructured_element_translation>
The UniversalLanguageSelector extension (
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:UniversalLanguageSelector )
allows users to easily switch the interface language; it also embeds
an interface to enter text in non-Latin languages even if your
keyboard doesn't allow it.
Seems very useful indeed.
Just asking: would it play nicely with our AnonymousI18N script?
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:AnonymousI18N.js>
If it's what I remember, that would be superseded.
Incidently, Rillke has openend a section on [[COM:VPP]] on this.
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:VPP#Elaborate_whether_mw:Extension:UniversalLanguageSelector_is_suitable_for_Commons>
There would probably be some adjustments to make to transition from
the current way we handle multilingual content and interface, but I
don't perceive them as insurmountable.
Yes. Indeed, I wondered above how the Extension would fit with our black
magic, but we can certainly think of revamping our magic to benefit from
the extensions.
Yes, and this requires that people who know the black magic study the
extension a bit: devs can give better answers than me but it's still up
to the community to decide what to do.
You could play with the extension a bit: 1) you can ask translation
admin rights on
mediawiki.org or Meta and set up some pages for
translation, 2) I (or others) can easily give translation admin + sysop
on testwiki to do more or less whatever you wish.
Nemo