Help:Translation workflow

Help page

This page describes the translation workflow for this wiki. You can help out at any step; for example, if you'd just like to translate pages that have already been prepared for translation, you can skip to step 3.

Step 0. Creating a source page[edit | edit source]

Currently, the page must first be written in English before it can be translated.

  • If the page you'd like to make available in another language already exists, skip to step 1.
  • If the page doesn't exist yet, you can create it. See the Creating articles section on the Main Page for details.

Step 1. Preparing a page for translation[edit | edit source]

1.1. Required[edit | edit source]

Before a page can be translated, special tags need to be added to indicate translatable parts of the page.

1.2. Suggested[edit | edit source]

Categories[edit | edit source]

  • Change any categories from [[Category:Features]] to [[Category:Features{{#translation:}}]] in order to have pages organized by language instead of having all of them in one category.[1][2]

Links[edit | edit source]

  • Ensure links to other wiki pages use the [[Special:MyLanguage/Page name here|Link text here]] syntax instead of [[Page name here|Link text here]], [[Page name here]], and [[Page name here|]].[note 1][note 2]

Variables[edit | edit source]

  • If there is some content that should not be translated, you can make that more obvious by using a translation variable (and reduce future translation work required if the value of the variable changes). For example: In version <tvar name="variableName">1.2.3</tvar> ....
    • This can also be applied to links as described in the point above: [[<tvar name="link">Special:MyLanguage/Page name here</tvar>|Link text here]]. Translators only need to translate the "Link text here" part.

Dates[edit | edit source]

  • To localize a date, there's no need to manually translate it; just specify it in the YYYY-MM-DD format and use #formatdate like this: {{#formatdate:2023-02-08}}.

Lists[edit | edit source]

  • If the list items aren't connected grammatically, then it may be best to manually wrap each in a separate pair of <translate>...</translate> tags for easier translation and further editing when items change.

Complex markup (e.g. tables)[edit | edit source]

  • Instead of translating the whole complex piece of markup, manually wrap in <translate>...</translate> only the parts that require translation, i.e. basically each cell (and header cell) separately.

1.3. Optional[edit | edit source]

This can also be done after step 3 and isn't required for translation itself, but it can be easier to do it right away:

  • Add a <languages/> tag at the very beginning of the page (before any content) so that when the page is translated, there will be a list of languages it is available in.

Step 2. Marking a page for translation[edit | edit source]

Translation administartors (or wiki administrators in general) will see a "Mark this page for translation" or similar link at the top of the page.[note 3]

  • Confirm that the page is tagged correctly (see step 1 above) and mark the page for translation.

Step 3. Translating a page[edit | edit source]

A link "Translate this page" will appear at the top of the page.[note 3]

  • Translate the page by pressing that link or manually going to Special:Translate. For a tutorial focusing specifically on this step, you can look at Translation example.
  • If you would like to see translations to other languages while you are translating, you can configure this in your preferences.

Caveats[edit | edit source]

  • Don't translate variables that start with a $ and look like this: $variableName. These are placeholders where some other content will be placed.
    • For example, for a string like $since–$until, you should just choose the corresponding range representation in your language. You can leave it as is if the dash works or, for example, you could rephrase as from $since to $until in your language if necessary.
    • There seems to be an issue with the translation editor where it shows things like $since� as suggestions.[note 4] Please don't use the character in the translation in such cases.

Editing the source page after translation[edit | edit source]

The source page can be edited even after it's marked for translation, but there are special considerations that you should be aware of when doing so (in order to reduce redundant translator work to a minimum).

  1. See Changing the source text.
  2. After editing, the page must be marked for translation (step 2) again for new parts to be translatable, after which you can proceed to step 3 to translate them.

See also[edit | edit source]

Notes[edit | edit source]

  1. Unfortunately, this interferes with Special:WantedPages, Special:WhatLinksHere—these pages won't show such links. Additionally, it produces "wanted pages" like $link when you use a translation variable for the link destination.
  2. This will link the user to their currently used wiki UI language, which may not match the language of the page that they chose to read.
  3. 3.0 3.1 You may need to be on the desktop version of the wiki to see this.
  4. It seems this may be caused by there not being a space after the variable in the source text.

References[edit | edit source]

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