[Foundation-l] Translatewiki illustrates how low internationalisation is in the priorities of the Wikimedia Foundation

[Jesse (Pathoschild)]

On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 10:27 AM, Teofilo <teofilowiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> Before Translatewiki existed it was possible for Wikimedia/Wikipedia
> users to improve the translation of the Mediawiki software's message
> used on their project into their own language.
>
> It is no longer possible now, because Translatewiki exists, and there
> is a powerful Translatewiki lobby within the local Wikipedia/Wikimedia
> communities which actively fights against the translation of messages
> on-wiki, and compells users to open a user account on Translatewiki


Translatewiki provides an interface for editing the MediaWiki
localization messages. These messages are available to all wikis
(including non-Wikimedia wikis), instead of just one wiki. For
example, see Meta with a Chinese interface:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/No_such_page?uselang=zh .

You can still translate the wiki directly by editing the MediaWiki
namespace, the same way it has always been done. This change will not
be available to other wikis, and the message will no longer be updated
from Translatewiki.

--
Yours cordially,
Jesse (Pathoschild)