Meta talk:Babylon/Archives/2017

Translation of the week

Hello, may u help me with Translation of the week page. And mark page 'ready for translate'? It will be really helpful. Iniquity (talk) 14:28, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Done. Start to work with it with one of translation administrator. Thanks. Iniquity (talk) 17:03, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Don't completely understand

Who are actually translators? Professionals or amateurs? Can I apply for this role and which way? If I need someone's help, how to ask for it?--RegisteredUser (talk) 08:15, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

We count everyone as translators who translates pages on Wikimedia projects. So yes, you can be a translator as well. There's no thing as "apply first", just start translating pages and that's it. You can read Translation requests to get started. Stryn (talk) 13:54, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Thank you.--RegisteredUser (talk) 14:09, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Page still a draft? Meta translation coordinators‎ mass mailed it

I received a mass mail that this page is ready for translation into ja, time stamp Meta translation coordinators‎, 22:19, 10 March 2017 (UTC). When I clicked and jumped to the above page, however, warning note in ja tells me it's still a draft and not for translation yet. Could I leave the page right away as it is ? --Omotecho (talk) 13:39, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

Apparently Samuele2002 did this. I hope they revert their action, otherwise I will do it in the coming days. Thanks for notifying us! --Vogone (talk) 21:01, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

I don't see anything in Special:Log/notifytranslators. Why this isn't being logged and why the big red warning not to use the feature is ignored? (I just tested a couple of times to confirm the bug existed after some time). Thanks, —MarcoAurelio 12:35, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

Apparently this is yet another bug on the feature. Filled phab:T160276. —MarcoAurelio 12:48, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

Since Samuele2002 chose not to react, I have unmarked the page again, but did not delete the already translated parts, hoping they can be of use in the future. Sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused. --Vogone (talk) 18:53, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Vogone fine by me apologize if I have not answered before. --Samuele2002 (Talk!) 19:36, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Hi all. The stable part of that page had been marked for translation by the primary author, but the rest of the content was not ready. @Samuele2002: Thank you for trying to help, but please do not mark content for translation yourself, if a page is marked as a draft. -- Guillaume and I will now try to clean it up, so that we retain the translations of the stable content, and invalidate the translations of the placeholders and draft content. Sorry for the confusion. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 16:36, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Thank you all to tell things are under controll. Have copied the existing translation I have added till I put it back. Thank you again for clarification. --Omotecho (talk) 19:20, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

CentralNotice Banners

Hi. I have a question regarding this message group on Special:LanguageStats. It contains over 9000 messages and it seems that most of them aren't actually translatable, as they contain messages like

• centralnotice_bannercount_fr12
• Appeal-default
• Appeal-template-default
• Form-template-default
• Form-countryspecific-control

and nothing else. Should I just paste the source text and go on? Can anyone tell me what's the purpose of these messages being translatable? And how exactly they're made translatable? Is it at all possible to remove them from translation? --Piramidion 18:59, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

I have no idea about the purpose and so on, it requires actually looking at them and I do not have time for this atm, but as to how they are made tranlatable -- one uses syntax similar to template parameters in banner code {{{name}}} and that's it. Once /en respective message is created users can translate it, Translate interface creates CNBanner namespace pages for translations, and once a sysop or CN administrator turns message group state for the language to published the messages get automatically copied to respective Mediawiki namespace pages. I guess those "parameters" become technically translatable even if there is no /en page or if they were defined as well variables for some other than localisation purpose, from the names of the messages it looks to be the case. (Again, I did not check the content). You probably can just paste the source text if it is the case, but it serves little purpose. As to whether they can be removed from translation I have no idea, I think they might disappear from there when banners get archived. But I am not sure. I hope other people will provide more helpful input on this. --Base (talk) 22:18, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

This is phabricator:T53470. Other CentralNotice issues are filed as subtasks of the same tracking task. Nemo 23:59, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Needing translators on cases of abuses

Apparently, there have been growing number of cases about sysop abuses in local Wikipedias, especially Romanian Wikipedia and Turkish Wikipedia, filed at Requests for comment. I believe that more translators are needed. Thoughts? --George Ho (talk) 19:32, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Non-English source text marked for translation

There are these messages, namely ItWikiCon/2017 and ItWikiCon/2017/Sede, which are in Italian and are marked for translation. I can see that the Translate system accepts Italian as a source language. But afaik, only English may be used as a source. Did I miss some policy change? Or should these pages be removed from translation and potentially fixed so that their English versions are marked for translation?--Piramidion 09:23, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Source (page content) language of pages can be changed since about a month or so. That means that the source can be on any of the Translate extension supported languages. See [1]. Nemo will know better on the adverse effects, if any. Regards, —MarcoAurelio 12:52, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Users who want to translate pages written in languages they don't know should probably add English (or any other language they know) to their assistant languages in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing. Nemo 14:05, 30 March 2017 (UTC) P.s.: Except I see that the /en page was populated with Italian text, instead of the /it, due to incorrect order of operations. I'll warn the translation admin, please delete the /en page now.

Thanks. I'll add English, but will have to wait until someone translates those pages into English or some other languages I understand (or I'll have to learn Italian instead :)). What languages are supported by the Translate extension? I suppose there shouldn't be too many of them, because if someone creates a page in some language with a low number of native speakers, we'll hardly find a volunteer translator to translate it into some of the world languages.--Piramidion 16:13, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

All MediaWiki languages are supported. Making sure that a translatable page is actually able to be translated falls within the translation administrator's tasks and judgement. Nemo 16:17, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

IMHO, that's not a good idea. I'd even say that it's a rather bad one, bacause it might potentially cause a lot of problems. A translation admin edit war is one of them. Let's see if it pays off. Can you please provide the links to relevant discussions and/or Phabricator tasks? I'd like to get myself acquainted with the process.--Piramidion 16:34, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

• How to properly categorize this page Italian Minor Projects' Wikimedia User Group? Who exacly decided to make it possible to mark non-English pages for translation and what was the reasoning to do this? Did anyone consider the consequences?--Piramidion 12:14, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Outdated info? Wikimedia Foundation

Is there any update for Wikimedhia Foundation#Other Links? The target is an archive info: [$florida-statute-0617 Corporations (not for profit) in Florida] links to an archive of Florida statuate, updated in 2010. Sorry, I was not able to indicate the original text in en, and appreciate your advice. ----Omotecho (talk) 12:38, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Do you transcribe "Wikimedia specific nouns" into your writing system?

Hello, fellow translators, I'm just curious how you handle nouns including "Wikimedia", "Metawiki" and such in your translation? Do you transcribe them into your local spelling system, or in my case "ウィキメディア" "メディアウィキ" etc.? Do you leave them as is and just use them as in English into your translation like in my language case such as "Winimediaでは", "Metawikiについて"? Is there any concensus? Thank you for your thoughts, and sorry if I missed similar question among Archives. ----Omotecho (talk) 01:50, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

I think it is also right to translate the names of the projects, so as to facilitate their understanding for the native speakers of that language. Although in cases where there are no exact translations for that language, the denomination in English would be preferred. —Alvaro Molina (✉ - ✔) 02:38, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Hi, AlvaroMolina, do you think so, too? Too bad that building concensus is hard in a free knowledge source as Wikimenia projects... my only reference is Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not translated into Japanese. Thank you as you replied me promptly. Regards, ----Omotecho (talk) 20:24, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Translated page not updated

Hello, I remarks that Category:Wikimedia_Belgium/fr still have an old category Category:Proposed_Wikimedia_chapters modified in his source Category:Wikimedia Belgium one year ago. I tried to update the source page to see if the translated page will be updated without success. Can someone help ? Thanks. Jona (talk) 12:12, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

The page had not been marked for translation yet; done now.[2] Translation admins can check bolded pages at Special:PageTranslation to find more category pages which have been updated since their last marking. --Nemo 13:26, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

You did it ! Thanks. For the record, is it something that I could have done myself ? I don't see how you did it. Kind regards, Jona (talk) 07:19, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

No, Meta:Translation administrators are needed. Nemo 09:06, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Question concerning reverting translations

Hi all, Some of my translations are being reverted though the update I made to the translation was required because of FuzzyBot additions to the source segment. My question is: Is it a good practice to revert translations instead of updating them? I have contacted the reverter concerning his action and he is still reverting. Haytham^Abulela 02:51, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

As User:FuzzyBot, "he" is not reverting anything, the translation admins are. FuzzyBot is only applying the instructions. If you feel an old translation should have been kept as is, you can ask the translation admins to check the "do not invalidate translations" checkboxes. --Nemo 09:05, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Sorry for the confusion. My issue is not with FuzzyBot edits. I am aware that FuzzyBot is a bot that is used by translation administrators to update source segments in translated pages to reflect the changes effected on source pages and mark the translated segments as outdated or need updating. I am referring to it to clarify why I have updated the translation, which is to reflect the changes made to the source segment, not simply changing the wording of the translation to suit my style. An example will clarify the situation. This is the reversion I have contacted the reverter about: https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Strategy%2FWikimedia_movement%2F2017%2Far&type=revision&diff=16375828&oldid=16374000. My question is: Is it a good practice to revert translations instead of updating them? --Haytham^Abulela 12:56, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Random English text in Korean notice template

On the Korean Wikipedia, this is showing up to link to the 2017 Wikimedia movement strategy process: http://i.imgur.com/z3vdeDF.jpg (Didn't upload to Commons because I wasn't sure the text wasn't copyrighted). --Brainy J (talk) 17:12, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Fixed. Can you check that it's now correct? Stryn (talk) 18:09, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Need German translation please

Hi. I need a German interpreter please. I created and then transcluded de:Wikipedia:Projektdiskussion/Interwiki search results from sister projects now active (need translation please) at de:Wikipedia:Projektdiskussion to notify the community about cross-wiki search results. Thanks. --George Ho (talk) 17:22, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Added one, first attempt at [3]. Mutante (talk) 17:42, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Bist Du die IP? Ich würde das ein wenig anders formulieren.

And one question to George Ho: Should we replace your message or add it? And should we write it to some better suited places in deWP, like Kurier as well, or keep it there? Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 17:48, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Leave de:Wikipedia:Projektdiskussion/Suchergebnisse von Schwesterprojekten sind jetzt verfügbar remaining, Sänger. Meanwhile, you can spread the message elsewhere if you wish please. Thanks... or Danke. --George Ho (talk) 17:54, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Needing respective translators to post notifications in local wikis

I posted a suggestion at Wikimedia Forum#Search results from sister projects enabled in all Wikipedias of needing individual translators to post notifications about crosswiki search results. I already posted notifications at Spanish and German Wikipedia sites with help of translators. I posted English notifications at Chinese and Japanese Wikipedia sites needing translations. I think more are needed. --George Ho (talk) 20:43, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Your feedback is welcome!

Hey everyone, TL;DR, see Technical Collaboration/Community collaboration in product development/Tech ambassadors and translators to provide feedback on the role of tech ambassadors and tech translators until August 22nd, or in person at Wikimania. All details on page. Any help spreading the word is certainly appreciated :) Ciao, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 14:09, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

What to do with references when translating an article

Hi there I was wondering what people do with referencing when translating. Do you try and find a new reference in your own language or just keep the reference in the language from which the translation is being done? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Johanhilge (talk • contribs) 14:11, 17 August 2017‎ (UTC) (UTC)

Hi Johanhilge, the norm is probably to keep it. I'd say the biggest problem with that isn't the language – we're an encyclopedia trying to write about the entire world, and we're bound to have to use sources in other languages – but with the fact that we don't control the sources. That way, it's easy for errors to propagate through the encyclopedia. /Julle (talk) 21:22, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Translations

Wouldn't it make more sense for "Translations" in the upper-left corner went to Meta:Babylon and not to Special:LanguageStats? I think Special:LanguageStats is a bit hard to understand as someone who hasn't translated before, and we might lose some interested editors that way. /Julle (talk) 21:25, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

tvar issues

Apparently <tvar> isn't working well on Huggle/Download and got reverted. Can you please review that and find an explanation? Thanks. —MarcoAurelio (talk) 10:24, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

Need help on Portuguese Wikipedia

I added File:Blame It on the Boogie by The Jacksons A-side US vinyl.png into an article, but some bot named Salebot reverted the edit. I don't know who operates the bot, so I wonder whether there is a Portuguese interpreter. I appreciate the help as needed. --George Ho (talk) 07:38, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

This question doesn't belong here, but pt:Usuário(a)_Discussão:Salebot#Salebot says "It can make mistakes — In this case, you can revert the bot and save all the job (this is a wiki, after all)." So I think you can try to undo it, and see what happens. Stryn (talk) 14:27, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

The reinsertion was reverted, Stryn. I got the message at my Portuguese page. --George Ho (talk) 21:35, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Oops, I mistakenly used the diff link of "Shake Your Body Down to the Ground". I did revert, and the bot didn't revert back. That's a relief! --George Ho (talk) 21:45, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Stryn, the bot reverted my reinsertion of another image for another article. --George Ho (talk) 21:50, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

@George Ho: You have to file your issues to pt:Wikipédia:Café_dos_programadores rather than this talk page, as your addition of files don't seem related to any kinds of i18n/l10n. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 10:54, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Bring back the Moldovan Cyrillic Wikipedia

Hi, my name is Muso Kortjass and I would like to would you do the my official language Moldovan Cyrillic because my cannot lose my mother tongue because other wanted it to get deleted, so please help me. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Muso Max Von Vaduz (talk • contribs) 13:26, 14 August 2017‎ (UTC) (UTC)

Context: Proposals for closing projects/Deletion of Moldovan Wikipedia 2. Muso, are you able to contribute a language converter to Cyrillic? If you understand PHP, you can find a rather simple example in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/source/mediawiki/browse/master/languages/classes/LanguageKu.php . What's needed is basically a map of characters from latin to cyrillic and vice versa and a list of example conversions for testing. --Nemo 07:14, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

@Muso Max Von Vaduz: This is what I want to ask, so the Moldovan communities can be safety merged with Romanian, but it seems aganisted by @Strainu:? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 10:50, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

I want to be a translator.

Hello! My name is Abílio and I am from Angola. I can speak English,Portuguese and a local language(Umbundu). I would like to be a translator here but I do not know how to start. What can I do ? Do I need make an inscription or just editing any article? I hope recieving an answer or explanation. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Tchicucuma (talk) .

Tchicucuma, If what you want to translate is Wikipedia articles then I suggest you start from Wikipedia. Go to Portuguese Wikipedia, find what article it lacks that exists in English and start translating it into Portuguese Wikipedia. It would be useful to read the rules at the same time, I suggest to start from pt:Wikipédia:Cinco pilares and pt:Wikipédia:Livro de estilo but you need to cover everything in pt:Predefinição:Políticas e recomendações da Wikipédia. After getting some experience you can also start creating Wikipedia in Umbundu here. The appropriate instructions are right there on spot. If it is not encyclopaedic articles what you are interested in, but let's say quotes or writing a dictionary, then I recommend to check out Wikipedia's sister projects listed on the Main Page. And if it is this wiki, Meta-Wiki what you want to translate, though I would not recommend it is as a starting place, then you can read mw:Help:Extension:Translate/Translation example and start translating here. Again I suggest to start from Portuguese where other editors can correct you and thus you can get some experience and then you can switch to Umbundu. You can also translate Mediawiki interface to Umbundu on https://translatewiki.net . Hope this helps, if not you then some random reader of this page. --Base (talk) 15:59, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

Disabling Messaging Fallbacks for Language Analysis

Hello,

The Search Platform team (formerly part of Discovery) is planning to fix a long-standing search bug on many wiki projects by disabling the code in CirrusSearch that re-uses the “fallback” languages (which are specified for user interface or system messages) for the language analysis modules (which are used to index words in search). Deployment is planned to start the week of October 9, 2017.

Messaging fallbacks specify what language to show a message in when there is no message available in the language of a given wiki. A language analysis module is language-specific software that processes text to improve searching—so that, for example, searching for a given word will find related forms of that word, like "hope, hopes, hoping, hoped" or "resume, resumé, résumé" on English-language wikis.

Fallback languages for system messages make sense for historical and cultural reasons—a reader of the Chechen Wikipedia is more likely to understand a user interface or system message in Russian than in French, Greek, Hindi, Italian, or Japanese—but the fallbacks don't necessarily make any linguistic sense. Chechen and Russian, for example, are from unrelated language families; while the languages have undoubtedly influenced one another, their grammars are completed different.

We will deploy the software change that disables using messaging fallbacks for language analysis fallbacks in about two weeks (targeting the week of October 9, 2017), with any cross-language analysis exceptions explicitly configured in a new manner. Changes will not immediately happen to all affected wikis because each wiki in each language will need to be re-indexed, which is a separate process that takes time. There may also be other delays caused by Elasticsearch upgrades or other changes that need immediate attention.

You can also track progress of the tasks on Phabricator or read more, see examples, and get the full list of languages affected on MediaWiki.org.

Yours, CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 17:30, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

These changes were completed the week of October 9th and deployed the following week. The re-indexing of the affected wikis was completed a few hours ago and should be live everywhere now. The list of affected languages is on the Phab ticket T177871 and a list by wiki is on that page in a comment. For more details, see the write up on MediaWiki. TJones (WMF) (talk) 14:44, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Translatability of the WMF website

Folks here may be interested in Talk:Wikimedia Foundation website/2017 update#Multilingualism, namely this open question: «We are an international organization and we need an international website. Has multilingualism been considered and is it currently in the list of requirements? Nikerabbit (talk) 06:58, 15 September 2017 (UTC)». --Nemo 13:56, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Cannot find translation of some Dutch words in English

Wikidata tries to define 1 code-number for 1 object. But i cannot find a 'proper' English translation (in 1 word) for some Dutch words, and i had a 'discussion' about that on wikidata

• for example ;

sloot is in English ditch , but a greppel is a smaller ditch that is used to drain excess water to a sloot. Also, there are no English translations (in 1 word) for wijk = wikidata-item. and there is also no English translation of wetering

Hi Henkevdb, I don't yet know anything about Wikidata or its use in translating. I do see some risks with relying on it too much. I also see some difficulties in trying to pin down exact corresponding definitions of terms between languages where some words don't exactly correspond or the use of synonyms is wider in one language than other. Another risk is that a term incorrectly used in one language is propagated into incorrect terms in other languages too. I don't know much waterways either ;) As a general approach to this of challenge I think a translator would first need to look at the common synonyms for each term, then look up the detailed definitions for each synonym and make the best match between the two languages. A lot of work! I don't know how Wikidata works but I would expect the translations to be sourced to independent, reliable dictionaries or other reference books. With no specialist knowledge, I think 'sloot' generally translates best into 'ditch'. 'Greppel' (narrower) could translate to 'trench', and alternatively 'cut' or even 'furrow'. A 'trench' can be deep or shallow. The main characteristic of 'wetering' seems to be 'streaming water'. So it could translate to 'channel' or 'stream'. I don't the time or knowledge to go further into this. Fwiw, I think creating definitions based only on 'size' is perhaps too one-dimensional. Without knowing anything about Wikidata, my feeling is that it may be best used for terms (mathematical, architectural, geographical, etc) which correspond well across languages. There are many different language ,terms used to describe bodies of water that to some extent have overlapping or synonymous meanings. These might be difficult to codify. Good luck! Mike (talk) 10:27, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Editing translation of the week

Hello, I was wondering if anyone who knows Dutch to a high level would be willing to edit my translation. I would love to get some feedback in order to keep learning the finer points of this language. Thanks! — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Seth.camara (talk) 02:39, 8 June 2017 (UTC)