On 23/08/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
While the current preferred method of localisation appears to be to use the MediaWiki namespace, this doesn't work well with the recently-introduced ability to choose ones' own interface language in preferences: if I choose on en.wiki to view the interface in, say, Navajo, or Amharic, or Bengali, nothing shows up because most or all of the translations for these languages were made in the MediaWiki namespace.
I have wondered before whether a specific, site-neutral, system for collabourating on translations would be useful - not only for new languages, but to keep existing translations up to date when the English "master" messages are changed, or new features are added.
However, languages which *do* have available translations live in a MediaWiki namespace can fairly trivially have them exported to an appropriate PHP file, after which they will also be available at install time, and as a user preference. I was pondering a while ago how to merge exported messages into existing language files which aren't in alphabetical order, and preserve comments, etc - a case of manipulating the diffs produced by 'maintenance/diffLanguage.php'...