edward molasses molasses-one@shaw.ca wrote:
For example, when i am looking at an english word, and click on an entry in the left-hand column to see the definition in another language, sometimes there is an intermediate page on the other language's site that uses the english translation of the word as the page name and it lists a link to the translated word. I don't understand why sometimes this page organization is used?
An example is the intermediate page for the italian translation of the word house which can be found here: http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/house
The purpose of interlanguage links is to link to an article on the *same* topic in another language. For the purpose of a dictionary, this means the same word. Thus an article that treats the English word 'house' must use interwiki links for other languages with articles also treating the English word 'house'.
Some wiktionaries have been using an inline link in the translation table for the kind of link you appear to be looking for, i.e., a link from en:house to it:casa... this generally appears next to the translation as a small symbol such as ^, °, ☞, or ↺, depending on the wiktionary.
When the Wiktionaries are better written, http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/house will have an actual definition of the word as well.
*Muke!