[Wikipedia-l] How to help the international Wikipedias along

[Larry Sanger]

Stefan, I think the problem with your suggestion is that automated
translation is a very inexact science at best (I have this direct from a
linguist friend who does it for a living), and there would have to be a huge
amount of user input/editing to make sure the links were correct.

Here's an idea.  Instead of trying to link directly to the article in the
other language, just link to a (to-be-created) *search page* on the other
wiki.  So we'd simply be creating new links below or above each article,
like this:

    Search for a different-language version of this article:
    [[Deutsch]] -- [[Francais]] -- [etc.]

and then we'd also have to create the search pages (which is mainly just a
matter of copying code, I guess).  We'd also have to translate the
above-indented text into the other languages...

Here's yet another idea: don't do anything right now, but when the wikis are
all built up as they should be within a few years, go in and *add* (by hand,
or partially automated) links to the other-language versions of all pages.
That would be a huge amount of work, but it's probably the only practical
way to achieve a direct-link scheme.

Larry