Hi,
AFAIK there is no document on mediawiki.org which says this
definitively yet. what order are the following things consulted in, in
finding a relevant system message?
XX - wiki's default language (not en, for argument's sake)
YY - user's language preference (not en or XX)
ZZ - language code specified in the URL as uselang=ZZ (not en, XX or YY)
A MessagesEn.php
B MessagesXX.php
C MessagesYY.php
D MessagesZZ.php
E MediaWiki:Message
F MediaWiki:Message/XX
G MediaWiki:Message/YY
H MediaWiki:Message/ZZ
??? any others???
(assume also for interest's sake that a particular one may not be
defined, so it has to keep looking)
Is this the order?
H
E
D
B
A
thanks,
Brianna
--
They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment:
http://modernthings.org/
Probably I am saying something that already has been discussed, but I
just came today to these pages:
http://webworld.unesco.org/imld/babel_en.htmlhttp://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=16540&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECT…
about UNESCO's B@abel program, and it seemed like something
interesting for Wikimedia. They could be potential partners, help
promote the i18n efforts, or something... Their missions looks a lot
similar to WM's. Does anyone know if contact has been made between WM
and this project? Perhaps I should have sent this to the foundation
mailing list instead...
Waldir
Anders Wegge Jakobsen <wegge(a)wegge.dk> writes:
Six weeks ago I became involved in an argument about translation of
the mediawiki software. I made the comment below.
> Yes, the obvious solution is that I maintain a private translation;
> at the same time one or more of the admins at dawiki plays catchup,
> whenever the inerface suddenly start sprouting english words, and the
> rest of the world get to see the worst of OSS. Everyone is happy.
Unfortunately, it have proven to be true. No substantial changes to
the danish localization have happened since then. Since I have cooled
of a bit since then, and my prediction have proven true, I'll try to
summarize the problems with localization on translatewiki as I see
them:
* With the current setup, translators will need to access the code, to
actually see what cryptical strings like 'You have not specified
target revision or revi sions to perform this function on.' actually
mean.
* That a web interface exists does not equal that a large horde of
skilled translators will be attracted.
* Noone likes to see others credited with their work.
This is not an attempt to renew a heated argument. The idea of
providing a relative easy-to-use interface for translation work is
better than having no one translating the interface into any
particular language. But in my opinion, it is not at present time a
substitute for having someone wit at least rudimentary PHP coding
skills doing the translation and submitting patches or direct commits
to svn.
And yes, the issue of crediting work was what angered me most. It
still is, and unless I'm the one individual in the world with the
thinnest skin on this matter, this issue will arise again.
--
// Wegge
<http://geowiki.wegge.dk/wiki/Forside> - Alt om geocaching
Bruger du den gratis spamfighther ser jeg kun dine indlæg *EN* gang.
--
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.
Dear translators,
According to the last 'CTO weekly report'[1] Brion is about to
branch MediaWiki version 1.12 this week. That means that this
version of MediaWiki is the version of the software that new
users of MediaWiki will be using for a while (outside of
Wikimedia not everyone is always running the 'bleeding edge'
version of MediaWiki).
Even though this version of MediaWiki will have the largest
increase ever in support for languages, this is the time to
finish those loose ends.
Please check if you have any remaining translations in the
core messages or if you can at least complete the most often
used messages in the languages you are able to contribute to
in Betawiki[2].
End of year 2007 I sent out an overview of MediaWiki
localisation[3]. In that report I set a few ambitious goals
for MediaWiki localisation in 2008. I am happy to report that
we are well on track to reaching those goals[4],[5]. However,
it is very important to realise that localisation is an
ongoing process: messages are being added constantly and
sometimes they also change. These are all things that are made
visible when using Betawiki as the platform for MediaWiki
localisation. Based on user input, we also keep on improving
the tools used.
We still need more translators for languages that have not
been worked on for a while and languages that still have large
gaps in localisation.
Some localisation statistics for languages that have the 10
largest Wikipedias:
|-------------------------------------------|
| language | mostused | core | WMF | ext* |
|-------------------------------------------|
| English | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| German | 100% | 100% | 99% | 65% |
| French | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| Polish | 100% | 100% | 80% | 36% |
| Japanse | 100% | 100% | 58% | 32% |
| Italian | 100% | 100% | 64% | 26% |
| Dutch | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| Portugese | 100% | 100% | 100% | 74% |
| Spanish | 100% | 92% | 24% | 16% |
| Swedish | 100% | 100% | 100% | 56% |
|-------------------------------------------|
* Message groups are: most often used messages (mostused), all messages
in standard MediaWiki (core), all messages used in extensions that
Wikimedia wikis use (WMF), all extension messages (ext)
Have a great wiki experience and thank you for your help!
Cheers!
Siebrand
[1] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2008-February/036405.html
[2] http://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special:Translate&task=untranslated&…
[3] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/translators-l/2007-December/000571.html
[4] http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Translating:Group_statistics
[5] http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Translating:Group_statistics_in_time
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>
Date: 17 Jan 2008 09:51
Subject: [Foundation-l] Announcement of bounties for the localisation
of MediaWiki
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, wikipedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Hoi,
The "Stichting Open Progress <http://stichtingopenprogress.org>" is happy to
announce that it has received a grant from Hivos<http://www.hivos.nl/english>,
to improve the localisation of MediaWiki. Open Progress is going to offer a
bounty of up to 200 EURO for the full localisation for a language. Given the
activity of Hivos, a Dutch NGO, a bounty will only be available for
languages in Asia, Africa and Latin America that have a sizable number of
speakers.
With this project we hope to achieve that MediaWiki can indeed claim to be
one of the best Open Source projects that provides great localisation for
many many languages out of the box. It will improve the usability not only
for the WMF projects in that language but also for projects like Wikimedia
Commons, Wikieducator, Wikihow, OmegaWiki .. the list goes on ..
The budget we have is substantial but limited. We will be sadly happy when
we have to announce that we have ran out of money. Sad because we want to
localise more languages, happy because so many languages will have been
improved.
For the precise details of the project I refer to the details on
Betawiki<http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Translating:Language_project>.
NB The amounts are inclusive of the money transfer costs and as these can be
substantial, we offer some alternatives. In the past I have proposed a
scheme called "Donations, putting your money where your mouth
is<http://openprogress.org/Donations%2C_putting_your_money_where_your_mouth_is>".
In this scheme you choose to get paid or donate the money for one of the
projects that we advertise under this scheme. Another way of getting the
money paid is when people in a country agree to work together and have us
pay the money together as well. This could for instance work in the case of
Wikimedia India...
Thanks,
GerardM
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Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
--
They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment:
http://modernthings.org/
I have not seen a comprehensive overview of MediaWiki localisation discussed on the lists I am posting this message to, so I thought I might give it a try. All statistics are based on MediaWiki 1.12 alpha, SVN version r29106.
==Introduction==
*Localisation or L10n - the process of adapting the software to be as familiar as possible to a specific locale (in scope)
*Internationalisation or i18n - the process of ensuring that an application is capable of adapting to local requirements (out of scope)
MediaWiki has a user interface (UI) definition for 319 languages. Of those languages at least 17 language codes are duplicates and/or serve a purpose for usability[1]. Reporting on them, however, is not relevant. So MediaWiki in its current state supports 302 languages. To be able to generate statistics on localisation, a MessagesXx.php file should be present in languages/messages. There currently are 262 such files, of which 16 are redirects from the duplicates/usability group[2]. So MediaWiki has an active in-product localisation for 236 languages. 66 languages have an interface, but simply fall back to English.
The MediaWiki core product recognises several collections of localisable content (three of which are defined in messageTypes.inc):
* 'normal' messages that can be localised (1726)
* optional messages that can be localised, which usually only happens for languages not using a Latin script (161)
* ignored messages that should not be localised (100)
* namespace names and namespace aliases (17)
* skin names (7)
* magic words (120)
* special page names (76)
* other (directionality, date formats, separators, book store lists, link trail, and others)
Localisation of MediaWiki revolves around all of the above. Reporting is done on the normal messages only.
MediaWiki is more than just the core product. On http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:All_extensions some 750 extensions have some kind of documentation. This analysis will scope only to the code currently present in svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/trunk. The source code repository contains give or take 230 extensions. Of those 230 extensions, about 140 contain messages that can be visible in the UI in some use case (debugging excluded). Out of those 140, about 10 extensions have an exotic implementation for localisation localisation support at all (just English text in the code). 10 extensions appear to be outdated. I have seen about 5 different 'standard' implementations of i18n in extensions. Since MediaWiki 1.11 there is wfLoadExtensionMessages. Not that many extensions use this yet for message handling. If you can help add more standard i18n support for extensions (an overview can be found at http://translatewiki.net/wiki/User:Siebrand/tobeadded) or help in standardising L10n for extensions, please do not hesitate.
==MediaWiki localisation in practice==
Localisation of MediaWiki is currently done in the following ways I am aware of:
* in local wikis: Sysops on local wikis shape and translate messages to fit their needs. This is being done in wikis that are part of Wikimedia, Wikia, Wikitravel, corporate wikis, etc. This type of localisation has the fewest benefits for the core product and extensions because it happens completely out of the scope of svn committers. I have heard Wikia supports languages that are not supported in the svn version. I would like to get some help in identifying and contacting these communities to try and get their localisations in the core product. Together with SPQRobin, I am trying to get what has been localised in local Wikipedias into the core product and recruit users that worked on the localisation to work on a more centralised way of localisation (see Betawiki)
* through bugzilla/svn: A user of MediaWiki submits patches for core messages and/or extensions. These users are mostly part of a wiki community that is part of Wikimedia. These are usually taken care of by committers raymond, rotemliss, and sometimes others). Some users maintain a language directly on SVN. At the moment, 10-15 languages are maintained this way: Danish, German, Persian, Hebrew, Indonesian, Kazach (3 scripts), Chinese (3 variants), and some more less frequently.
* through Betawiki: Betawiki was founded in mid 2005 by Niklas Laxström. In the years to follow, Betawiki has grown to be a MediaWiki localisation community with over 200 users that has contributed to the localisation of 120 languages each month in the past few months. Users that are only familiar with MediaWiki as a tool can localise almost every aspect of MediaWiki (except for the group 'other' mentioned earlier) in a wiki interface. The work of the translators is regularly committed to svn by nikerabbit, and myself. Betawiki also offers a .po export that enables users to use more advanced translation tools to make their translation. This option was added recently and no translations in this format have been sumitted yet. Betawiki also supports translation of 122 extensions, aiming to support everything that can be supported.
==MediaWiki localisation statistics==
MediaWiki localisation statistics have been around since June 2005 at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Localisation_statistics[3]. Traditionally reports have focused on the complete set of core messages. Recently a small study was done after usage of messages, which resulted in a set of almost 500 'most often used messages in MediaWiki', based on usage of messages on the cluster of Wikimedia (http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Most_often_used_messages_in_MediaWiki).
Up to recently there were no statistics available on the localisation of extensions. Through groupStatistics.php in the extension Translate, these statistics can now be created. Aside from reporting on 'most often used MediaWiki messages', 'MediaWiki messages', and 'all extension messages supported by extension Translate' (short: extension messages). Additionally, a meta extension group of 34 extensions used in the projects of Wikimedia has been created (short: Wikimedia messages). A regularly updated table of these statistics can be found at http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Translating:Group_statistics.
Some (arbitrary) milestones have been set for the four above mentioned collections of messages. For the usability of MediaWiki in a particular language, the group 'core-mostused' is the most important. A language must qualify for MediaWiki to have minimal support for that language. Reaching the milestones for the first two groups is something the Wikimedia language committee considers to use as a requirement for new Wikimedia wikis:
* core-mostused (496 messages): 98%
* wikimedia extensions (354 messages): 90%
* core (1726 messages): 90%
* extensions (1785 messages): 65%
Currently the following numbers of languages have passed the above milestones:
* core-mostused: 47 (15,5% of supported languages)
* wikimedia extensions: 10 (3,3% of supported languages)
* core: 49 (16,2% of supported languages)
* extensions: 7 (2,3% of supported languages)
==Conclusion==
So... Are we doing well on localisation or do we suck? My personal opinion is that we do something in between. Observing that there are some 250 Wikipedias that all use the Wikimedia Commons media repository, and that only 47 languages have a minimal localisation, we could do better. With Single User Login around the corner (isn't it), we must do better. On the other hand, new language projects within Wikimedia all have excellent localisation of the core product. These languages include Asturian, Bikol Central, Lower Sorbian, Extremaduran, and Galician. But where is Hindi, for example, with currently only 7% of core messages translated?
With the Wikimedia Foundation aiming to put MediaWiki to good use in developing countries and products like NGO-in-a-box that include MediaWiki, the potential of MediaWiki as a tool in creating and preserving knowledge in the languages of the world is huge. We have to tap into that potential and *you* (yes, I am glad you read this far and are now reading my appeal) can help. If you know people that are proficient in a language and like contributing to localisation, please point them in the right direction. If you know of organisations that can help localising MediaWiki: please approach them and ask them to help.
We have all the tools now to successfully localise MediaWiki into any of the 7000 or so languages that have been classified in ISO 639-3. We only need one person per language to make it happen. Reaching the first two milestones (core-mostused and wikimedia extensions) takes about 16 hours of work. Using Betawiki or the .po, little to no technical knowledge is required.
This was the pitch. How about we aim to at least double the numbers by the end of 2008 to:
* core-mostused: 120
* wikimedia extensions: 50
* core: 90
* extensions: 20
I would like to wish everyone involved in any aspect of MediaWiki a wonderful 2008.
Cheers!
Siebrand Mazeland
[1] als,crh,iu,kk,kk-cn,kk-kz,kk-tr,ku,sr,sr-jc,sr-jl,zh,zh-cn,zh-sg,zh-hk,zh-min-nan,zh-yue
[2] crh,iu,kk,kk-cn,kk-kz,kk-tr,ku,sr,sr-jc,sr-jl,zh,zh-cn,zh-sg,zh-hk,zh-min-nan,zh-yue
[3] older locations are http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Localisation_statistics/stats and
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Localization_statistics
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Siebrand Mazeland <s.mazeland(a)xs4all.nl>
Date: Nov 9, 2007 10:33 AM
Subject: [Translators-l] Betawiki has moved tp http://translatewiki.net
To: Wikimedia Translators <translators-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Dear translators.
For those of you who are using Betawiki, please update your bookmarks.
Betawiki is on http://translatewiki.net now and it's performance has
improved dramatically.
Betawiki can be used to translate all core messages of MediaWiki
(~1900) and the messages of about 85 extensions for MediaWiki (~1100)
without requiring any technical knowledge. Developers commit the work
of the translators to MediaWiki so it is available in the product.
In October 2007 we have committed changes to 71 languages from
Betawiki. We expect this number to grow to over 100 before Q2-2007.
Please check http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Localisation_statistics and
try to get translators to Betawiki for those languages with poor
support in MediaWiki.
You continuing support for MediaWiki localisation in Betawiki
(http://translatewiki.net) is highly appreciated.
Cheers!
Siebrand
P.s. I would appreciate it of you forwarded this mail in some form to
any appropriate mailing list.
_______________________________________________
Translators-l mailing list
Translators-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/translators-l
--
Casey Brown
Cbrown1023
---
Note: This e-mail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to
this address will probably get lost.
Dear friends,
Please see http://landfill.bugzilla.org/gangleri/show_bug.cgi?id=3315 .
This is not MediaZilla, it is Bugzilla test installation using 'current dev'
and is supposed to be used for i18n, BiDi, UTF-8 etc. issues. Be welcome to
sign in there else you can comment here.
Attachment #01 [details] shows a screen dump of
http://yi.wiktionary.org/wiki/user_talk:Gangleri/!#shrayberke
as seen with
KDE 3.5.0
and
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; de; rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070427 Firefox/2.0.0.3
The problem I am working is:
Identify the best suitable fonts to display IPA characters in as much
environments (operating systems and browsers versions *and* configurations) to
represent these characters correctly.
Help page:
http://yi.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=template_talk:style/IPA
should show the characters in the font-families specified in parameter
'font-family'.
If you can not see IPA at all just post a comment. Thank you for all your
efforts in advance.
I suppose that many Wikipedians and web enthuziasts have worked on similar
issues before. Please do not hezitate to add some references (url's) to
appropriate pages.
Special thanks to Refoyl Finkel who is providing an addition to
http://www.cs.engr.uky.edu/~raphael/yiddish/makeyiddish.html
which can both accept IPA input and generate IPA output.
Best regards Reinhardt [[user:Gangleri]]
Hoi,
I realised (too late) that this message is of interest to this list as
well..
Thanks,
Gerard
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: GerardM <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>
Date: Oct 21, 2007 8:02 AM
Subject: Novial, the language and its localisation
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Cc: langcom-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Hoi,
I just found that the localisation of the Novial language has happened on
the Novial Wikipedia. As this language is only "enabled" on this project,
the word done to localise is limited to this project.
Would someone be so kind and allow for Novial to be a MediaWiki supported
language and, would someone be so kind to export the localisation data and
move it into BetaWiki ?
Thanks,
GerardM
