[Wikitech-l] GSoC -- TranslateSvg: Bringing the translation revolution to Wikimedia Commons

TranslateSvg has the potential to revolutionise the ability of Wikimedia's diverse groups of image maintainers to work together creating and improving the same communal set of SVG (vector) images. At the moment, providing alternative translations of SVG files typically requires "forking" the image. This drastically increases the image's maintenance burden and thereby discourages image improvement. Where such improvement does take place, it is seldom shared between different language versions. TranslateSvg would completely change this suboptimal workflow by removing the need for the image to be forked; instead, translations (provided using a streamlined special page) would be saved inside the image itself, in accordance with the SVG 1.1 specification. The file, complete with these embedded translations, could then be displayed in either the language of a wiki, the user's preferred interface language, or any given arbitrary language. If the SVG file were to be served directly, it would helpfully display in the user's system language where such a translation was available, aiding reuse possibilities. When I originally raised this idea it received the support of several Wikimedia Commons users as well as WMF developers.