[Foundation-l] Localisation of MediaWiki

[Cormac Lawler]

On Jan 16, 2008 9:25 PM, Jesse Martin (Pathoschild) <pathoschild at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hello,
>
> GerardM and I had a long phone conference about localization
> requirements, and we've reached a consensus.
>
> Cormac raises a valid concern about the difficulty of localization
> alongside all the other tasks of opening a new wiki, but the new
> requirements actually mean less work is needed for the first project.
> The previous requirements called for the translation of around 1400
> messages for the first wiki, and around 200 messages for the second
> wiki. The new requirements only call for the translation of 500
> messages for the first wiki, and 1700 before the second wiki is
> approved (by which time many messages have usually been translated
> over time by the first wiki's community).
>
> Even though the new requirements include all extension used by
> Wikimedia wikis, this is redistributed so that the difficulty of
> opening the first wiki is reduced, and localization can be done slowly
> over time until the second project instead of in a huge one-time
> batch.



Thanks for this, Jesse. I hadn't understood (and I take it from your mail)
that there is a 'staggered' process for localisation - that new projects are
to be asked to translate a set number of messages, and subsequent ones the
rest (that haven't already been done by the first). On the language here,
perhaps my delineation of "first" and "subsequent" projects up till now
("first" being projects that have begun before this policy changing, and
"subsequent" being new projects) was causing confusion - or perhaps I'm
still confused. :-) Anyway, I think a staggered process is better than a
huge one-time batch - but it still seems like an awful lot of work (on top
of other pressures), and I am just wondering how best to distribute the
work...

Cormac