[Mageia-i18n] Wiki translation discussion

Wed Jun 13 20:58:52 CEST 2012

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+Hi.  Some time ago the possibility of using the Mediawiki extension
+Translate was raised, and at the time you had some serious misgivings.
+ Perhaps you saw the UserBase wiki at an early stage, but I'd like to
+try to answer your concerns so that it could be discussed further.
+
+"It will kind of force synchronization between the en wiki and others".
+
+To some degree this is correct, but only as defined by the
+administrators of the wiki.  The important thing to remember is that
+the admins (with input from anyone concerned) mark up for translation
+the English pages where it is basic information required by all
+languages.  Those pages are synchronized fairly rigidly, allowing for
+freedom in local idiom.  Pages where information is specific to one
+language are simply not marked for translation, and can be written in
+the appropriate language.  An example of that can be seen at
+http://userbase.kde.org/Translation_Workflow/Chinese
+
+* non-localized URLs (instead of w.m.o/en/Home and w.m.o/fr/Accueil
+(ie, localized title _in_ the URL), we would have w.m.o/Home and
+w.m.o/Home/fr (English title in the URL)
+
+That was a problem originally, but hasn't been for some time.  When
+the translation page is pulled up the first field offered is the
+pagename so that you can set a localised display name.  Yurchor uses
+this extensively and can give you more detail if you wish.
+
+* inconsistent navigation in a chosen locale (tested on the KDE
+Userbase wiki):
+   - my browser accepts French as a primary language, so content is
+returned to me in French;
+   - I decide to look at the Spanish version of a page; fine, it
+works; my intent is to navigate the Spanish-speaking pages now;
+   - clicking on another wiki link will forward me to the default URL,
+that will be rewritten in French => back to French, where I would have
+expected Spanish;
+   - right, digging into this, this is because those links are
+prefixed such as: "Special:myLanguage/Applications" which rewrites to
+Applications/fr
+
+It is expected that the default would be that people prefer to read in
+their own language.  However, should the need arise to do what you
+describe, that's possible too.  In the sidebar is a language
+drop-down.  If you had set that to Spanish, then used links to another
+page, the Spanish translation would be displayed, assuming that there
+is a Spanish translation of that page, otherwise it would fall back to
+the default.  I hope that explains it better.  Try it out, and ask if
+you don't get the result you expect.
+
+You mention Wikipedia, but that, I think, is a very bad example for
+distro wikis.  The main problem is that someone, for example, puts a
+really useful bit of information on the German wiki - how does anyone
+from any other country ever see it?
+
+Prior to using the extension we had no tools to help translators know
+when anything changes.  The result was that a translated page could be
+two years out of date without anyone realising it. Too often the page
+was never re-visited. The advantage of our system to translators is
+that they do not have to re-work a long page when something changes.
+They simply access the messages that are marked as changed, and deal
+with those.  It saves a good deal of time and effort, and because it's
+easier, it is better maintained.
+
+We hope this answers some of your questions, and will be happy to
+answer any other questions either by email or on IRC.
+
+AnneW (annew at kde.org)
+yurchor (yurchor at gmail.com)
+
+
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