Hi,
What is the best way to set up multilingual capabilities on an existing wiki? I administer a wiki that has gained some international followers, and they’d like to translate it into their own language to help promote it. Searching the mediawiki.org site shows a number of extensions, but none really seem to suit. Ideally, I’d like to have a situation where there is pageX_en and pageX_de, pageX_ru, etc. Are there any recommended practices for setting this up?
On 8 February 2012 22:22, Erik Luken eluken@pentarch.org wrote:
What is the best way to set up multilingual capabilities on an existing wiki? I administer a wiki that has gained some international followers, and they’d like to translate it into their own language to help promote it. Searching the mediawiki.org site shows a number of extensions, but none really seem to suit. Ideally, I’d like to have a situation where there is pageX_en and pageX_de, pageX_ru, etc. Are there any recommended practices for setting this up?
It is usually pageX/en, pageX/de, etc. actually.
But in that case, you can just do it with a template rather than extension.
What is the best way to set up multilingual capabilities on an existing wiki? I administer a wiki that has gained some international followers, and they’d like to translate it into their own language to help promote it. Searching the mediawiki.org site shows a number of extensions, but none really seem to suit. Ideally, I’d like to have a situation where there is pageX_en and pageX_de, pageX_ru, etc. Are there any recommended practices for setting this up?
It is usually pageX/en, pageX/de, etc. actually.
But in that case, you can just do it with a template rather than extension.
Okay. So for example, at the bottom of http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/LocalSettings.php#Language_of_user_interface there is a block containing a number of languages. I am going to presume that the translations are user provided rather than some automated process.
I did find in the documentation on that page the section for the language of the user interface. However it does not seem to support multiple entries. Currently I have it set to "en", I'd potentially like to add "ru", "de", and "it" to the list. As an added bonus, I do not have shell access to the servers (whee). In toying with the user preferences, I can change the interface language around to a multitude of different options. However, the content remains in English. Also as described in http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multilingual_MediaWiki#Admin_choices, it does not really define how to support additional languages, nor does the localsettings.php file or documentation give any real clue as to how to accomplish this.
Creating pages such as pageX/de does work, but there is nothing to specify that this page is actually in German, other than the author writing it in German. As an example on my wiki, I've created the page http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Newpage/de. The contents are Merry Christmas in both English and German. One page I read on the mediawiki.org site seemed to say that there should be a droplist with languages on page creation. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multilingual_MediaWiki page under Language filtering shows a droplist for languages.
So after reading this information, it seems that I should create an additional namespace for each language that I want to enable, or am I missing something fairly obvious and simple?
If you can ask the server admin to add extensions I recommend:
* Polyglot: it will redirect the user to the page in his language, if exist, depending on his browser language (you must to identify the page language using subpagenames /de /ru /es ...). There must to be a 'base language' without subpagename. * LanguageSelector: the user can choose his navigation language, it changes the interface language, and, combined with Polyglot, redirects him to the page in the choosen language if exists, ignoring the browser language
Attention: take the last SVN version of Polyglot because the version in the snapshot don't works with Mw 1.18.
Links: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Polyglot http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:LanguageSelector
El dc 08 de 02 de 2012 a les 16:12 -0600, en/na Erik Luken va escriure:
What is the best way to set up multilingual capabilities on an existing wiki? I administer a wiki that has gained some international followers, and they’d like to translate it into their own language to help promote it. Searching the mediawiki.org site shows a number of extensions, but none really seem to suit. Ideally, I’d like to have a situation where there is pageX_en and pageX_de, pageX_ru, etc. Are there any recommended practices for setting this up?
It is usually pageX/en, pageX/de, etc. actually.
But in that case, you can just do it with a template rather than extension.
Okay. So for example, at the bottom of http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/LocalSettings.php#Language_of_user_interface there is a block containing a number of languages. I am going to presume that the translations are user provided rather than some automated process.
I did find in the documentation on that page the section for the language of the user interface. However it does not seem to support multiple entries. Currently I have it set to "en", I'd potentially like to add "ru", "de", and "it" to the list. As an added bonus, I do not have shell access to the servers (whee). In toying with the user preferences, I can change the interface language around to a multitude of different options. However, the content remains in English. Also as described in http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multilingual_MediaWiki#Admin_choices, it does not really define how to support additional languages, nor does the localsettings.php file or documentation give any real clue as to how to accomplish this.
Creating pages such as pageX/de does work, but there is nothing to specify that this page is actually in German, other than the author writing it in German. As an example on my wiki, I've created the page http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Newpage/de. The contents are Merry Christmas in both English and German. One page I read on the mediawiki.org site seemed to say that there should be a droplist with languages on page creation. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multilingual_MediaWiki page under Language filtering shows a droplist for languages.
So after reading this information, it seems that I should create an additional namespace for each language that I want to enable, or am I missing something fairly obvious and simple?
MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
2012/2/8 Erik Luken eluken@pentarch.org:
Hi,
What is the best way to set up multilingual capabilities on an existing wiki? I administer a wiki that has gained some international followers, and they’d like to translate it into their own language to help promote it. Searching the mediawiki.org site shows a number of extensions, but none really seem to suit. Ideally, I’d like to have a situation where there is pageX_en and pageX_de, pageX_ru, etc. Are there any recommended practices for setting this up?
Hi Erik,
I'm not sure what your exact scenario is, but these pages may help: * General info about MediaWiki localization capabilities: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Localisation
An extension that gives you and your users an easy and structured way to translate pages. * http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Translate * http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:Translate
When used properly, this extension will create the links to the translations automatically.
You should also know that in MediaWiki in general every user can easily set his interface language in the preferences. The support for this in MediaWiki 1.18 became even better.
Another possible scenario is to go the Wikipedia way and install several instances of MediaWiki and enable interlanguage links; see http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Interlanguage_links . You can also mix both ways.
If you'll describe in more detail to what extent do you want to translate your wiki, we may be able to help more.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
On 9 February 2012 08:51, Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
2012/2/8 Erik Luken eluken@pentarch.org:
Hi,
What is the best way to set up multilingual capabilities on an existing wiki? I administer a wiki that has gained some international followers, and they’d like to translate it into their own language to help promote it. Searching the mediawiki.org site shows a number of extensions, but none really seem to suit. Ideally, I’d like to have a situation where there is pageX_en and pageX_de, pageX_ru, etc. Are there any recommended practices for setting this up?
Hi Erik,
I'm not sure what your exact scenario is, but these pages may help:
- General info about MediaWiki localization capabilities:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Localisation
An extension that gives you and your users an easy and structured way to translate pages.
- http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Translate
- http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:Translate
When used properly, this extension will create the links to the translations automatically.
You should also know that in MediaWiki in general every user can easily set his interface language in the preferences. The support for this in MediaWiki 1.18 became even better.
Another possible scenario is to go the Wikipedia way and install several instances of MediaWiki and enable interlanguage links; see http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Interlanguage_links . You can also mix both ways.
If you'll describe in more detail to what extent do you want to translate your wiki, we may be able to help more.
I hate to undermine such an excellent post, but he mentions in his second post that he has no shell access. So extensions and wiki families are out of the question, I'm afraid.
2012/2/9 Svip svippy@gmail.com:
On 9 February 2012 08:51, Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
2012/2/8 Erik Luken eluken@pentarch.org:
Hi,
What is the best way to set up multilingual capabilities on an existing wiki? I administer a wiki that has gained some international followers, and they’d like to translate it into their own language to help promote it. Searching the mediawiki.org site shows a number of extensions, but none really seem to suit. Ideally, I’d like to have a situation where there is pageX_en and pageX_de, pageX_ru, etc. Are there any recommended practices for setting this up?
Hi Erik,
I'm not sure what your exact scenario is, but these pages may help:
- General info about MediaWiki localization capabilities:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Localisation
An extension that gives you and your users an easy and structured way to translate pages.
- http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Translate
- http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:Translate
When used properly, this extension will create the links to the translations automatically.
You should also know that in MediaWiki in general every user can easily set his interface language in the preferences. The support for this in MediaWiki 1.18 became even better.
Another possible scenario is to go the Wikipedia way and install several instances of MediaWiki and enable interlanguage links; see http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Interlanguage_links . You can also mix both ways.
If you'll describe in more detail to what extent do you want to translate your wiki, we may be able to help more.
I hate to undermine such an excellent post, but he mentions in his second post that he has no shell access. So extensions and wiki families are out of the question, I'm afraid.
Grrr, missed that :(
Well, adding namespace would be a somewhat weird solution.
It's probably better to use subpages - Page/fr for French etc., or to simply add pages in other languages and link between them using clever templates, as it is done on many pages on meta.wikimedia.org, such as https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Polls_are_evil .
I am actually able to install extensions. As long as they don't require me to execute command line instructions. I'll look into the translate extension and see if that will work for me.
-----Original Message----- From: Svip Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2012 01:54 To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] Multilingual wiki
On 9 February 2012 08:51, Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
2012/2/8 Erik Luken eluken@pentarch.org:
Hi,
What is the best way to set up multilingual capabilities on an existing wiki? I administer a wiki that has gained some international followers, and they’d like to translate it into their own language to help promote it. Searching the mediawiki.org site shows a number of extensions, but none really seem to suit. Ideally, I’d like to have a situation where there is pageX_en and pageX_de, pageX_ru, etc. Are there any recommended practices for setting this up?
Hi Erik,
I'm not sure what your exact scenario is, but these pages may help:
- General info about MediaWiki localization capabilities:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Localisation
An extension that gives you and your users an easy and structured way to translate pages.
- http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Translate
- http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:Translate
When used properly, this extension will create the links to the translations automatically.
You should also know that in MediaWiki in general every user can easily set his interface language in the preferences. The support for this in MediaWiki 1.18 became even better.
Another possible scenario is to go the Wikipedia way and install several instances of MediaWiki and enable interlanguage links; see http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Interlanguage_links . You can also mix both ways.
If you'll describe in more detail to what extent do you want to translate your wiki, we may be able to help more.
I hate to undermine such an excellent post, but he mentions in his second post that he has no shell access. So extensions and wiki families are out of the question, I'm afraid.
_______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
On Wednesday 08 February 2012 21:22:30 Anne Wilson wrote:
Hi,
What is the best way to set up multilingual capabilities on an existing wiki? I administer a wiki that has gained some international followers, and they’d like to translate it into their own language to help promote it. Searching the mediawiki.org site shows a number of extensions, but none really seem to suit. Ideally, I’d like to have a situation where there is pageX_en and pageX_de, pageX_ru, etc. Are there any recommended practices for setting this up?
There are two main problems - first, that the pages can get out of sync, and second that there is no easy way for translators to be reminded about what needs doing. That is, by the old way of doing it.
It sounds to me as though you want the same as we wanted in our wiki - translations of English pages, kept easily in sync, with all new input being on the English page. If that is your requirement, Niklas Laxstrom's Translate extension is for you. You can see how it works for us if you visit http://userbase.kde.org. We'd be happy to answer questions on Freenode's #kde-www.
Anne
mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org