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

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
Yes you can localise at your own Wiki. It is even recommended for several
messages, particularly those messages that are specific to messages about
policies and what not particular to your wiki. Such specific texts are
explicitly what we do not want at translatewiki.net because at translatewiki
we localise MediaWiki. This is to ensure that all the MediaWiki
installations can use the localised messages per default.

As to translatewiki.net not being a Wikimedia Foundation project, you know,
it could be. It certainly has many of the necessary qualifications. Even
when you look at the people involved, they are quite substantial in the
Wikimedia world; Siebrand has a part time contract to ensure high quality
from the Wikimedia Foundation, Nikerabbit is on the board of the Finnish
chapter, I am on the language committee... Most of the people who contribute
localisations are heavily involved in their language projects many of them
as admins or bureaucrats.

Each language has a project page for a language and we are really happy when
many people contribute for a language; it raises the standards. Typically
there are very few issues between the translators for a language and when
they exist, the people who run translatewiki do not get involved. We do not
necessarily know any particular language as you can imagine.

One very powerful reason why you should not localise locally is because
there is no way that you will know locally when a message gets changed. The
consequence is that the quality of locally localised messages do not get the
same quality assurance as it gets in translatewiki.

So in essence, localising at translatewiki.net does enhance the quality of
the localisation. Only messages with changes that give specific information
for a local wiki should be localised locally.
Thanks,
      GerardM

On 27 January 2011 18:15, Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni at mail.huji.ac.il>wrote:

> 2011/1/27 Teofilo <teofilowiki at gmail.com>:
> > 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,
>
> As Chad said, it's still possible and it's often done in many wikis.
>
> > 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
> > (1).
>
> It's "powerful" simply because it makes sense not to duplicate the
> effort by translating messages on-wiki. If a certain message makes
> sense for MediaWiki in general, but not for Wikipedia, then it can and
> should be changed on-wiki after community discussion. The existence of
> a whole page devoted to such discussions in the French Wikipedia is a
> proof that this system works.
>
> > * Let awkward translations go on being displayed on their language
> > version of Wikipedia
>
> ... Or discuss changing them and ask the admins to implement the decision.
>
> If you think that changing that particular message in fr.wikipedia
> should be done locally and not in Translatewiki.net, express your
> opinion there.
>
> > * Or open an account on a non-Wikimedia project, which means providing
> > non-Wikimedia managers access to your personal data. That means you
> > are loosing the guarantees of
> > http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy (the guarantee that
> > your data are accessed only exceptionally and in such exceptional
> > cases, always handled by people trusted by the Wikimedia Foundation)
>
> Translatewiki.net has a privacy policy, too.
>
> > I ask the Wikimedia Foundation to protect its users from the
> > aggressions of non-Wikimedia projects. And to implement a set of
> > policies to prevent this sort of non-Wikimedia project lobbying.
>
> This is not aggression. Even though it's not officially connected to
> the WMF, the people operating Translatewiki.net are important
> contributors to Wikimedia projects and to MediaWiki. Thanks to
> Translatewiki.net localization became simpler and faster. It's true
> that the WMF could have made it, but the WMF didn't do it, and
> Translatewiki.net did and it fit pretty well into the way MediaWiki is
> developed.
>
> > I ask the Wikimedia Foundation to support people involved in
> > translation work, rather than expell them to non-Wikimedia projects.
>
> I do hope that the collaboration between Translatewiki.net and the WMF
> will become tighter, but there's nothing terribly broken in the way
> things work now.
>
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