Right. So I'll give it one last shot before you go try and create your own extension in the next two years. It appears to me like you are thinking in problems instead of opportunities.
Let me translate some of the remarks you made, and provide some more information:
(1) 'to set up a page to be translated, you have to not only set it up as a project, but break the parts of the page into individual translateable chunks': Opportunity speak: Wow. This is flexible. You can choose to put translate tags around the whole page content, where a parser will break it up for you, but it is also possible to keep the awkward formatting away from translators, and selectively keep out that formatting from the translatable content. Would there be any chance that this can be done automatically? My reply: sure. We are a little short on developers, but we are certainly prepared to help you further develop on the Translate extension if you are interested and able to.
(2) 'whole thing seems extremely cumbersome and inconvenient': Opportunity speak: I don't understand fully how to do this. At first glance it looks hard. Can you provide some additional information? My reply: sure. We'd be glad to help you. Please join us on Freenode's #mediawiki-i18n and we will see if we can get any misunderstandings out of the way.
(3) 'translatewiki.net currently doesn't have ANY documents or webpage projects, only software interfaces': Opportunity speak: I cannot find which content pages are available for translation at the moment. Do you have some links? My reply: sure. See http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Special:PageTranslation
(4) 'the documentation needs to be re-written to make it clear how to use it'. Opportunity speak: I cannot find the documentation. Where can I find it? My reply: Ouch. You got us there. Having the little development resources that we have, we have always invested in adding and improving functionality, and documentation is outdated at best. On mediawiki.org it is not present. We would appeaciate help in that area. Also see (2).
Cheers!
Siebrand Mazeland
-----Original Message----- From: mediawiki-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:mediawiki-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Kent S. Larsen II Sent: Friday, November 20, 2009 4:22 AM To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] Translating wiki articles
Yes, I checked out the link.
As far as I can tell, in order to set up a page to be translated, you have to not only set it up as a project, but break the parts of the page into individual translateable chunks.
The whole thing seems extremely cumbersome and inconvenient -- it really is set up to be used for translating a software interface and not actual documents.
As far as I can tell, translatewiki.net currently doesn't have ANY documents or webpage projects, only software interfaces.
If I'm wrong about this, then the documentation needs to be re-written to make it clear how to use it.
Kent