On 02/04/07, Ivan Lanin <ivanlanin(a)gmail.com> wrote: \o/ Thanks, Rob Church

Hoi! I would add that many languages that are starting a wiki at the moment miss a standard keyboard. Making one is almost always pretty easy, but it would be nice if we could host these keyboards on Commons. At the moment we cannot, because of the extension (almost always a ZIP file). For other language fonts are a problem, too. I’m available to offer free server space on another project, but it may be a bit confusing for first time users. The further we get from the west, the more we will work with and for people whose first meeting with a wiki will also be a first meeting with a computer, so the easier we keep the process, the better. Bèrto ‘d Sèra Personagi dl’ann 2006 për l’arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojàotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html _____ From: mediawiki-i18n-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:mediawiki-i18n-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of GerardM Sent: Monday, April 02, 2007 11:10 AM To: MediaWiki internationalisation Cc: foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-i18n] MediaWiki i18n "call to arms" Hoi, What Rob describes is correct but sadly he misses the point of the dispute. Indeed there are people working on internationalisation and I will be the first to acknowledge that Nikerabbit does a lot of great work. I singled him out when I mentioned that because of him there is currently support for Marathi and Lingala in MediaWiki. The issue is that people should be able to start the localisation in the Incubator. For that to be possible someone has to create the relevant message files in the Incubator. When a new project is created such a file needs to be created anyway. When a sufficient number of messages are translated, the patch for MediaWiki has to be dealt with no doubt along the lines Rob mentioned. For the Kabyle language work on the localisation has started. When one of the developers decides that sufficient messages have been translated in the BetaWiki to perform what Rob describes, then they can create the Kabyle wikipedia. with the blessing of the language committee. Thanks, GerardM Betawiki's Kabyle messages: http://nike.users.idler.fi/betawiki/Toiminnot:Translate?x=1 <http://nike.users.idler.fi/betawiki/Toiminnot:Translate?x=1&msgclass=core&sort=normal&uselang=kab> &msgclass=core&sort=normal&uselang=kab On 4/2/07, Rob Church &lt;robchur(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Hello, bon jour, guten tag, saluton, etc. I can't greet everyone fairly, because I don't speak 200-odd languages. Unfortunately, MediaWiki doesn't, either, and that's what this email's all about. I'm well aware that foundation-l has had a recent, er, "heated discussion" about internationalising the software with respect to starting new wikis, and I'd rather not stir up a beehive with regards to that. We've got some fantastic people working on the internationalisation front for MediaWiki; credit must go to Niklas Laxström for his patient, unending work in this field. I'd also like to mention Rotem Liss, who has been providing updates for the Hebrew language for a long period, now, as well as our volunteers giving us updates in German, Russian, Chinese and Japanese; a big, firm "thanks" is in order. The problem is that we don't have all the bases covered; there are vast numbers of languages not being maintained, and that's a bit of a problem for a software product that's supporting an organisation with international goals in mind. While individual communities can and do perform translations in their MediaWiki namespaces, reliance on this means that each new wiki we launch needs to perform this step, as opposed to having the interface available in their language, from the fore. I believe that not having software that speaks to you in your language is an immense barrier to contribution. I'd therefore like to rally a call to arms; we need translators! Thanks to (again, what an i18n legend this dude is) Nikerabbit's work on Betawiki (http://nike.users.idler.fi/betawiki/) means we will (I hope) soon have a clean extension on the Wikimedia Incubator which will make this stuff easier; it's the same process as editing the MediaWiki namespace now, except what we get out of it allows us to tweak and bundle up the translations into the right form for MediaWiki to use. Of course, if you're able to get to grips with our message file format and you can work a Subversion client, you are more than welcome to update the localisation for your language, or indeed, any other language you feel you can contribute to, and submit patches. If you submit on a consistent and regular basis, then commit access is also forthcoming - we're grateful for people who can speak languages we can't, who can help us out in a major area. Contributions to MediaWiki internationalisation fall under the GNU GPL, which is for all intents and purposes, ideologically similar to the GNU FDL. If you are the maintainer of a language, you will be credited for it, and you *will* have our immense respect and gratitude, as well as that of all our users. There's a guide to getting started with internationalisation at http://nike.users.idler.fi/betawiki/Translating:Intro, and anyone interested in helping out is strongly recommended to contact (look, shall we just make him the official i18n co-ordinator?) Nikerabbit; who can often be found on IRC (#mediawiki, irc.freenode.net). Thank you for your attention, and I apologise for cross-posting, Rob Church MediaWiki developer _______________________________________________ Mediawiki-i18n mailing list Mediawiki-i18n(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-i18n

Privet! Yes, a basic set would nice to start with. In time they will get to deliver a complete translation but we must make sure that we deliver at the very least an usable wiki. I'm afraid it will take more than 100, though. Basically we should put a native speaker in the condition of being an admin (categories, orphans, etc) and a user. We hope that the undergoing experiment with Kabyle (and probably Ingush, too) will lead to define what communities may need as a "first aid kit". Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html -----Original Message----- From: mediawiki-i18n-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:mediawiki-i18n-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of ????????? ??????? Sent: Monday, April 02, 2007 3:04 PM To: MediaWiki internationalisation Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-i18n] MediaWiki i18n "call to arms" Saluton kaj bonfarton. Probably, we should select basic message set? 50 or 100 most visible messages first of all to translate. -- Kunlabore, Alexander Sigachov _______________________________________________ Mediawiki-i18n mailing list Mediawiki-i18n(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-i18n

Hoi! Yes, when seen out of their natural context lots of message seem pure abracadabra. An added problem is that developers often double the same entity. Localization is a problem for all kind of development. I'm currently working on Drupal localization and while having all filtered thru a t() function is pretty nice for a "just write software and forget about locales" approach it really makes for an endless number of messages. Wikimedia is definitely not the only CMS having problems with a permanent growth in the message trees. I think we should really make taxonomy for messages, that is, we should categorize them by "concept". 1) Messages about time (lots of duplicates there) 2) Messages about editing 3) Messages about moving things 4) etc. It would be handy for "inventing interfaces", as it is often the case. We need parallel trees made of a) scopes (what is used where, add-ons, public interfaces, admin-only, etc) b) importance (how bad it is to use mediawiki without this message) This last b) tree can be "invented by us" but it should be eventually corrected based on what starting communities say, IMHO. Instead of "what is means in English" I'd let people see a choice from the existing translations, so that anyone can reuse the existing translation without needing to be an English speaker. We will always miss human resources in translation, it's better if we choose a situation in which all possible existing linguistic knowledge can be reused by volunteers. Now, all this is nice to write down, but apart from being a translator I'm also a coder myself; I know the distance between "it looks nice" and "here it is, use it". Let's hear what developers think about it. Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html -----Original Message----- From: mediawiki-i18n-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:mediawiki-i18n-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Brianna Laugher Sent: Monday, April 02, 2007 3:32 PM To: MediaWiki internationalisation Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-i18n] MediaWiki i18n "call to arms" Would it not be useful to have some kind of annotated list of system messages? eg 1. Message name 2. English contents especially important, these two: 3. When/where does the user see this? 4. Type of message (interface, explanation, warning, link text, link target, ...?) and maybe 5. How important is this to be translated? I am sure I am not the only person who, as either a Wikimedia administrator, or person setting up my own wiki, has been baffled by some of the messages. Some seem to be equal - which is the one that I actually want to change? Does this message show up in other places that I don't realise? (As a side note, I still think our current default messages are too Wikipedia-fied - and a 'simplfied' English set, like 'young wiki', would be cool to have as an option.) One of the devs once mentioned that system messages should not be 'overloaded' eg not everywhere that English speakers put "OK" is equivalent in other languages. I totally agree, but it can make identifying the necessary message difficult. (Another sidenote - it would be kind of cool if there was a way to see which messages are used in a certain page, kind of like how pages currently say which template/s they use) Anyway. Annotated system messages. Good idea or bad? Manageable? Should be put on mediawiki.org or some other way to manage them?? cheers Brianna user:pfctdayelise _______________________________________________ Mediawiki-i18n mailing list Mediawiki-i18n(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-i18n

Hoi! You're a genius :) Yeah, we can probably get a pattern out of that. So.. If we have a macro to load them up in a MySql db we get a 3-vectored space: 1) lancode (PK1) 2) message name (PK2; this is supposed to hold unchanged thru localization) 3) text We can get very close to "reading people's vote" by seeing which msgs are localized say by at least 75% of the existing interfaces. Yeah... al it should take is a php script that would parse a directory of message files and load them in the table. After that we simply run some "SELECT COUNT(*)"s to generate all the comparative analysis we need. If the $msg_names hold unchanged it shouldn't even be a long script, because you can simply parse the existing variables and use their name/content pair without writing any CASE statement at all, right? Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html -----Original Message----- From: mediawiki-i18n-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:mediawiki-i18n-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Brianna Laugher Sent: Monday, April 02, 2007 3:57 PM To: MediaWiki internationalisation Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-i18n] MediaWiki i18n "call to arms" On 02/04/07, Brianna Laugher &lt;brianna.laugher(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: messages? I forgot to mention. This could be "guessed at" by looking at existing, incomplete files. Probably there is a fairly predictable order to which messages get translated first. We can guess these are the most visible and thus the most important. Perhaps this can be useful for users who are starting new language files and are wondering where to start. cheers Brianna _______________________________________________ Mediawiki-i18n mailing list Mediawiki-i18n(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-i18n

Brianna Laugher schrieb: Brianna, we were talking exactly this morning about something like this, but that implies that we use a CAT (Computer Assisted Translation) tool for the localization. In some way a CAT-Tool would make the work on the texts to be translated also faster since you do not have to open, edit and close single pages, but you work in one rush and then save only once. Doing it the actual way sometimes really takes a lot of time when servers are slow. I will probably blog about this since then it is available to a wider audience than only the mediawiki-18n list. It is a great idea, since it helps to do better work - it needs to be database driven in order to make it accessible easily. /me having a mail overload that is getting somewhat tragic .. sigh ... sometimes I feel like being in an e-mail jungle ... Ciao, Sabine s.cretella(a)wordsandmore.it skype: sabinecretella

On 02/04/07, Brianna Laugher &lt;brianna.laugher(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Maybe not exactly what you had in mind, but in Betawiki there is special functionality which does something like that. It works by appending uselang=debug to the url; see [1] for example. It also gives a hint about the message type (plain text, html, wiki). [1] http://nike.users.idler.fi/betawiki/Toiminnot:Tuoreet_muutokset?uselang=deb… -- Niklas Laxström

Hoi, SIGH, WE REALLY WANT THIS SOFTWARE INTO MEDIAWIKI. IT DOES HOWEVER NOT HAVE PRIORITY. WE HAVE BEEN ASKING FOR THIS FOR MONTHS NOW. THE SOFTWARE HAS BEEN PREPARED BY NIKERABBIT.. IT JUST NEEDS ACCEPTING.. Sorry .. With this software in Incubator and with the messagefiles in Incubator the localisation only needs only to be done once.... Thanks, GerardM Brianna Laugher schreef:

This has been discussed before. See http://www.mail-archive.com/mediawiki-i18n@mail.wikimedia.org/msg00081.html Use case descriptions have been used on Betawiki before, but were disabled lately. Nike, can you say something about this? Sidenote about selecting messages by importance by frequency of their translation: Consider, that a lot of messages are not translated because they're new, not because they're not important. IMHO assingning messages importance will have to be done manually.