[Mediawiki-l] Example of a multiple language wiki

[Desilets, Alain]

> Hi,
> I've searched rather far and wide for an example configuration of a
> single topic wiki with a number of languages, but haven't found
> anything other than a few disparate suggestions of how to go about
> implementing it using the existing version of mediawiki. The general
> requirements are:
> - Like wikipedia, language in indicated in the domain name (e.g.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/, http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/, etc).
> - The user database is shared among all language wikis, but articles
> are not. Images/media are shared.
> - The code is not duplicated in multiple folders. Symbolic linking is
> okay.
> I have a partially-working setup I've hacked together myself that uses
> symbolic links, some mod_rewrite magic, multiple LocalSettings.php
> files, and a separate database for each language with the user tables
> (user, user_groups, user_newtalk, watchlist) federated to a single
> database. However, I'm interested in seeing how other people have done
> it. Would anyone care to share their configuration, or point to a
> online reference I may have missed?
> Thanks and Happy New Year,
> Garth

Hi Garth,

I have no experience with multilingual wikis using MediaWiki, but I have created a small proof-of-concept prototype of a multilingual wiki engine. You can view a demo of it here:

http://lizzy.iit.nrc.ca/LizzyHelpNew/uploads/demo_of_multilingual_LizzyWiki_features.mov

And the design is described in this research paper:

http://iit-iti.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/publications/nrc-48736_e.html

If you are interested in this kind of issues, I would encourage you to join the wiki-translation community which I started with Aphaia (the Wikipedia translation coordinator) and Marc Laporte (leader for the TikiWiki project).

In particular, you might be interested in the Cross-Lingual Wiki Engine project which is hosted there:

http://www.wiki-translation.com/tiki-index.php?page=Cross+Lingual+Wiki+Engine+Project&bl

This project was started in December, and it's trying to figure out what tools and processes are needed to support translation of content that is produced in a wiki way. We are using TikiWiki as our reference platform, but we hope that the kinds of processes and features we develop for it will be a useful source of inspiration for other engines as well. We would certainly love to have people from the MediaWiki community participate.

Alain Désilets




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