Help:System message/zh

系统消息是纯文本、wiki语法、CSS或JavaScript代码片段，可以用来自定义页面和每种语言的外观和行为和区域设置. MediaWiki使用消息的任何面向用户界面的一部分，用于核心和扩展的MediaWiki UI的国际化和本地化. MediaWiki中使用的所有消息都在 消息文件 中.



覆盖Wiki上的消息
您可以通过在wiki上编辑消息来覆盖消息的默认值. 每条消息在MediaWiki命名空间中都有一个wiki页面，其消息键作为页面的名称. 例如，“aboutsite”消息存储在MediaWiki:aboutsite中. 默认情况下，除非用户具有“editinterface”权限，否则此命名空间将被禁止编辑. 可以在Special:AllMessages上找到所有消息页面的列表. 编辑界面消息通常很简单，就像编辑普通的wiki页面一样，但它仅限于具有editinterface权限的用户，默认情况下这个权限会分配给管理员（和界面管理员）. Special:AllMessages表包含两列：链接的接口名称和文本. 文本水平分割以显示上面的默认文本，以及下面的自定义文本. 如果自定义消息不存在，则仅显示默认消息. 要自定义消息，请单击左列中的上部链接（消息名称）. 如果正在使用默认文本，则此链接为红色，因为编辑页面为空.

左列单元格中的下部链接指向该消息的讨论页面.

只有在以下情况下，才建议覆盖维基上的消息：


 * 这条消息有一个严重的错误，必须尽快纠正. 在这种情况下，如果是英文的，建议在源代码中也修复这个错误，如果不是，建议在维基翻译网上的翻译中修复这个错误.  在部署更正时，应该删除具有本地自定义的页面.
 * 如果本地维基使用不同的术语. 例如，很多信息使用“页面（page）”一词，但英文维基百科经常使用“文章（article）”.
 * 本地消息正在尝试添加一些独特的功能，例如用于小工具或模板. （在这种情况下，仍然建议考虑更改源消息或将此功能封装在扩展中，以便其他Wiki能够方便地使用它，而不必手动复制定制. ）



查找消息和文档
根据消息文档指南，MediaWiki如何使用每条消息，可用的变量，使用的参数，限制等等可以在[//translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special:Translate&task=reviewall&group=core&language=qqq&limit=5000&action=page&filter= qqq伪语言的完整文档]中找到解释. 对于旧版中的某些接口消息，可能存在一些较长的解释页面.

MediaWiki 1.18以后，你可以使用 或者 （如果已经存在 了）的URL指令来查看一个页面的系统消息来源（[ 示例]）. 所有引用自系统消息的内容都会被一个key代替，告诉你这个内容来自哪一个系统消息，使用内容语言显示的消息不会使用qqx显示.

介面的某些部分将 添加到使用qqx技巧时显示的字符串中. 例如，链接到主命名空间中的讨论页面的选项卡的标签显示为 ，但字符串实际上位于MediaWiki:Talk处.

如果页面使用例如标签，例如 特殊页面设置，你必须在 参数后面添加标签，例如.



本地化文件格式
MediaWiki中使用的所有消息都在 消息文件(MediaWiki命名空间) 中定义.

MediaWiki中有两种类型的消息文件：JSON和PHP. 截至2014年4月，核心MediaWiki和大多数维护的扩展已迁移到JSON格式. 您应该将JSON用于所有新开发. 有关迁移到JSON的更多信息，请参见 Requests for comment/Localisation format

JSON
从2013年底开始，引入了一种新的消息文件格式：JSON. JSON，非常常见的数据存数格式. 其中的每个键都是消息键，值是消息文本. 此外，特殊的  键用于存储有关翻译的信息，如翻译作者.

使用JSON使本地化文件更安全，因为它是不可执行的（JSON是纯文本）. 它还与jquery.i18n兼容，jquery.i18n是作为Project Milkshake的一部分开发的JavaScript库，它提供类似MediaWiki的前端本地化功能，并被一些希望减少对MediaWiki的依赖的扩展使用，如可视化编辑器和语言选择器.

由于更广泛的国际化和本地化工具被称为“Project Milkshake”，一些人将这种形式称为“香蕉”.



消息文件的所在位置
在MediaWiki核心中，本地化文件放在 目录中. MediaWiki扩展通常将它们的扩展放在 的子目录中. 如果一个项目中存在大量消息，为了便于维护，可能需要将这些消息拆分到两个或多个主题子目录中. 如果一个项目中存在大量消息，为了便于维护，可能需要将这些消息拆分到两个或多个主题子目录中. 以下是MediaWiki的 VisualEditor 扩展的一个例子：

您可以将新消息添加到英文“en”消息文件 ，并使用特殊的伪语言代码“qqq”&ndash； 将它们记录在消息文档文件中. 请看: 添加新消息.

元数据
目前，文件中使用以下元数据字段：


 * authors
 * 消息作者的JSON列表. 对于英文(en)和消息文档(qqq)，这些是在编辑消息文件时手动添加的.  对于所有其他语言，从translatewiki.net中导出消息文件时会自动插入此选项.  可以在translatewiki.net上编辑消息文档，文档编辑器也会自动插入到qqq.json文件中.


 * message-documentation
 * 这是用于存储消息文档的伪语言代码. 对于MediaWiki，这始终是qqq.  (这出现在一些扩展中，但实际上没有以任何方式进行处理.

这不是强制性的. )

公约
转义诸如换行符之类的特殊字符.

用不同字母表示字母的Unicode字符被存储为实际字符，而不是字符代码，因为这些文件有时会被人们读取，而且这会使文件变小( 而不是 ). 在任何情况下，开发人员几乎没有理由编辑除英语以外的任何语言的消息，因为这些消息通常是通过Translatewiki.net编辑的.

HTML代码也没有转义，因此是 而不是.

JSON文件使用制表符进行缩进.

PHP
较早的本地化文件格式是PHP. 这实质上是一个包含所有消息的PHP数组. 在核心MediaWiki中，每种语言都驻留在MediaWiki源代码的Languages/Message目录中的自己的文件中. 在扩展中，所有语言和消息文档(qqq)都在同一个文件中：ExtensionName.i18n.php，通常位于扩展的主目录中.

要将系统消息从PHP迁移到JSON，请使用GenerateJsonI18n.php脚本. 它会将消息移动到JSON文件，并用指向JSON文件的填充程序替换PHP文件的文本. 此样板代码是向后兼容MediaWiki 1.19所必需的. 它不用于不需要MediaWiki 1.19兼容性的新扩展中.



使用消息
MediaWiki使用由代码中的键引用的消息的中央存储库. 这不同于例如gettext系统，后者从源文件中提取可翻译的字符串. 基于密钥的系统让一些事情变得更容易，比如提炼原始文本和跟踪消息的更改. 缺点是使用的消息列表和这些键的源文本列表可能不同步. 在实践中，这不是一个大问题，唯一重要的问题是，有时不再使用的额外消息仍在等待翻译.

要使消息键更易于管理和搜索，请始终完整地编写它们，不要太依赖于动态创建它们.

另请参阅动态标识符编码约定.

要在JavaScript中使用消息，您必须在您的ResourceLoader模块的定义中的 属性中列出他.

有关在PHP和JavaScript中使用消息函数的详细信息，请参阅. '''这是一个重要的文档页，您应该在编写使用消息的代码之前阅读它. '''



消息源码
代码从以下来源查找系统消息：
 * MediaWiki命名空间 这允许维基在标准消息不适合或不需要时采用或覆盖其所有消息.
 * MediaWiki:消息名 是默认的消息存储位置
 * MediaWiki：消息名/语言名是当用户选择了维基默认语言以外的语言时使用的消息.
 * 来自消息文件：
 * 核心MediaWiki本身和大多数当前维护的扩展名按语言使用一个文件，名为 ，其中zyx是该语言的语言代码.
 * 一些较旧的扩展使用一个组合的消息文件来保存所有语言的所有消息，通常命名为.
 * 许多Wikimedia Foundation维基访问来自扩展的一些消息，允许他们标准化WMF维基中的消息，而无需将它们强加给每个MediaWiki安装.
 * 一些扩展使用其他技术.

缓存内容
系统消息是MediaWiki较重要的组件之一，主要是因为它用于每个Web请求. PHP消息文件很大，因为它们存储了数千个消息键和值. 加载该文件(如果用户的语言与内容语言不同，还可能加载多个文件)具有很大的内存和性能成本. 一个积极的、分层的缓存系统被用来降低这种性能影响.

MediaWiki内置了许多缓存机制，这使得代码更难理解. 从1.16开始，有了一个新的缓存系统，它将消息缓存到CDB文件或数据库中. 根据配置的不同，自定义消息缓存在文件系统和Memcached(或备选)中.

下表概述了所涉及的设置：

在MediaWiki 1.27.0和1.27.1中，自动检测已更改为有利于文件后端. 在 (默认)的情况下，文件后端与从开始的路径一起使用. 如果未设置此值(这是默认设置)，则使用由操作系统确定的临时目录. 如果无法检测到临时目录，则使用数据库后端作为后备. 由于共享主机上的文件冲突和安全问题(请参见T127127和T161453)，已从1.27.2和1.28.0恢复.



函数回溯
为了更好地直观地描述缓存层，这里有一个函数回溯，说明在检索消息时调用了哪些方法. 有关每一层的说明，请参阅以下各节.



消息缓存
类是消息的顶级缓存. 它从Message类中调用，并返回消息的最终原始内容. 该层处理以下逻辑：


 * 正在检查数据库中的消息覆盖
 * 在或设置为的任何位置缓存被覆盖的消息
 * 正在解析后备语言序列的剩余部分

最后一颗子弹很重要. 后被语言如果原始文档没有请求消息，则允许MediaWiki退回到另一种语言. 如下一节所述，大多数语言回退解析都发生在较低级别. 但是，只有 层检查数据库中是否有被覆盖的消息. 因此，这里完成了将被覆盖的消息从数据库集成到回退链中. 如果不使用数据库，则可以禁用整个层.

本地化缓存
请看

LC存储
类只是LocalisationCache类用于实际缓存和检索消息的后端实现. 与在MediaWiki中用于通用缓存的 类类似，有许多不同的缓存类型(使用配置)： “FILE”选项由维基媒体基金会使用，之所以推荐它，是因为它比访问数据库更快，比APC缓存更可靠，特别是因为APC与PHP5.5或更高版本不兼容.
 * “db”(默认)-在数据库中缓存邮件
 * “文件”(如果设置了 ，则为默认值)-使用cdb将消息缓存到本地文件中
 * “Accel”-使用APC或其他操作码缓存来存储数据



添加新消息


选择消息前缀
请看：

消息密钥必须是全局唯一的. 这包括核心MediaWiki以及所有的扩展和皮肤.

在消息名称中坚持小写字母、数字和下划线；大多数其他字符不太实用或根本不起作用. 根据MediaWiki约定，第一个字符不区分大小写，其他字符区分大小写.

请遵循全球或本地的命名约定. 对于扩展名，请使用标准前缀，最好是小写的扩展名，后跟连字符(“-”). 例外情况包括：


 * 消息使用系统API
 * 它们必须以 、 、 开头. 在此前缀之后加上扩展前缀.  (请注意，这些消息应该位于单独的文件中，通常位于includes/i18/api.下)


 * 日志相关消息
 * 它们必须以 、 、 开头.


 * 用户访问权限
 * Special:ListGroupRights上显示的权限名称键必须以 开头. 完成句子“”的操作的名称必须以 开头.


 * 自定义的标签（详情参见Special:Tags）
 * 自定义的标签必须使用前缀


 * 特殊页面标题
 * 特殊页面标题必须使用前缀.



创建消息时需要注意的其他事项

 * 1) 确保您对消息使用了适当的处理(解析、 替换、转义为HTML等).
 * 2) 如果您的消息是核心的一部分，则通常应该将其添加到 ，尽管一些组件，如Installer、EXIF标记和ApiHelp有它们自己的消息文件.
 * 3) 如果您的消息是扩展名，请将其添加到相应子目录中的 文件或 文件中.  特别是，只有开发人员才能看到而大多数最终用户不能看到的API消息通常位于单独的文件中，如 .  如果扩展名有很多消息，您可以在 下创建子目录.  所有消息目录，包括默认的 ，必须在 的 部分或变量中列出.
 * 4) 暂停一下，考虑一下这条信息的措辞.  是不是越清楚越好？ 它会被误解吗？如果可能的话，征求其他开发人员或本地化人员的意见.  遵循国际化提示.
 * 5) 将文档添加到同一目录中的.
 * 6) 文件中消息的顺序应该大致符合项目的特点. 将来自同一功能的消息放在一起. 这有助于翻译人员保持专注、高效和一致.
 * 7) 将预计最基本和最频繁使用的消息放在文件的开头，将较罕见和技术更先进的消息放在文件末尾.

不应翻译的消息
一条“ ”的消息.
 * 1) “已屏蔽”消息是那些应该只以英文存在的消息消息文件.  它们是不需要翻译的消息，因为它们只引用其他消息或语言无关的功能，例如.
 * 1) 只有在以目标语言更改的情况下，才能翻译“可选”消息.

To flag such messages:


 * 分别使用 报文文档中的模板
 * 或者
 * 通过提交相应的补丁程序，告知上使用的扩展如何处理这些消息(另请参阅)：
 * 对于核心，在中添加消息密钥
 * 在 项下或
 * 在$optiona项下;
 * 对于扩展，在中，在扩展名下添加一行，如下所示
 * or
 * or

删除现有消息
从 和 中删除它. 不要费心学习其他语言. 从开始的更新将自动处理这些更新.

此外，检查消息是否出现在转换维基配置中的任何位置，例如，在可选或最常用的消息列表中(一个简单的git grep就足够了). 如果需要，请将其从这些列表中删除. 

更改现有消息

 * 1) 考虑更新消息文档.
 * 2) 如果旧的翻译不适合新的含义，请更改消息键.  This also includes changes in message handling (parsing, escaping, parameters, etc.). Improving the phrasing of a message without technical changes is usually not a reason for changing a key. At translatewiki.net, the translations will be marked as outdated so that they can be targeted by translators. Changing a message key does not require talking to the i18n team or filing a support request. However, if you have special circumstances or questions, ask in  or in the support page at.
 * 3) If the extension is supported by, please only change the English source message and/or key, and the accompanying entry in  . If needed, the translatewiki.net team will take care of updating the translations, marking them as outdated, cleaning up the file or renaming keys where possible. This also applies when you're only changing things like HTML tags which you could change in other languages without speaking those languages. Most of these actions will take place in translatewiki.net and will reach Git with about one day of delay.

Message documentation
There is a pseudo-language code  for message documentation. It is one of the ISO 639 codes reserved for private use. There, we do not keep translations of each message, but collect English sentences about each message: telling us where it is used, giving hints about how to translate it, and enumerating and describing its parameters, link to related messages, and so on. In translatewiki.net, these hints are shown to translators when they edit messages.

Programmers must document each and every message. Message documentation is an essential resource – not just for translators, but for all the maintainers of the module. Whenever a message is added to the software, a corresponding  entry must be added as well; revisions which don't do so are marked " " until the documentation is added.

Documentation in  files should be edited directly only when adding new messages or when changing an existing English message in a way that requires a documentation change, for example adding or removing parameters. In other cases, documentation should usually be edited in translatewiki. Each documentation string is accessible at https://translatewiki.net/wiki/MediaWiki: message-key /qqq, as if it were a translation. These edits will be exported to the source repositories along with the translations.

Useful information that should be in the documentation includes:


 * 1) Message handling (parsing, escaping, plain text).
 * 2) Type of parameters with example values.
 * 3) Where the message is used (pages, locations in the user interface).
 * 4) How the message is used where it is used (a page title, button text, etc.).
 * 5) What other messages are used together with this message, or which other messages this message refers to.
 * 6) Anything else that could be understood when the message is seen on the context, but not when the message is displayed alone (which is the case when it is being translated).
 * 7) If applicable, notes about grammar. For example, "open" in English can be both a verb and an adjective. In many other languages the words are different and it's impossible to guess how to translate them without documentation.
 * 8) Adjectives that describe things, such as "disabled", "open" or "blocked", must always say what are they describing. In many languages adjectives must have the gender of the noun that they describe. It may also happen that different kinds of things need different adjectives.
 * 9) If the message has special properties, for example, if it is a page name, or if it should not be a direct translation, but adapted to the culture or the project.
 * 10) Whether the message appears near other message, for example in a list or a menu. The wording or the grammatical features of the words should probably be similar to the messages nearby. Also, items in a list may have to be properly related to the heading of the list.
 * 11) Parts of the message that must not be translated, such as generic namespace names, URLs or tags.
 * 12) Explanations of potentially unclear words, for example abbreviations, like "CTA", or specific jargon, like "template", "suppress" or "stub". (Note that it's best to avoid such words in the first place!)
 * 13) Screenshots are very helpful. Don't crop – an image of the full screen in which the message appears gives complete context and can be reused in several messages.

A few other hints:


 * Remember that very, very often translators translate the messages without actually using the software.
 * Most usually, translators do not have any context information, neither of your module, nor of other messages in it.
 * A rephrased message alone is useless in most circumstances.
 * Don't use designers' jargon like "hamburger", "nav", or "comps".
 * Consider writing a glossary of the technical terms that are used in your module. If you do it, link to it from the messages' documentation.

You can link to other messages by using. Please do this if parts of the messages come from other messages (if this cannot be avoided), or if some messages are shown together or in same context.

translatewiki.net provides some default templates for documentation:


 * - for  messages
 * - for  messages
 * - for messages around user groups (, ,  ,   and  )
 * - for  messages

Have a look at the template pages for more information.

Internationalisation hints
Besides documentation, translators ask developers to consider some hints so as to make their work easier and more efficient and to allow an actual and good localisation for all languages. Even if only adding or editing messages in English, one should be aware of the needs of all languages. Each message is translated into more than 300 languages and this should be done in the best possible way. Correct implementation of these hints will very often help you write better messages in English, too.

Localisation#Help_and_contact_info lists the main places where you can find the assistance of experienced and knowledgeable people regarding i18n.

Use Message parameters and switches properly
That's a prerequisite of a correct wording for your messages.

Avoid message re-use
The translators discourage message re-use. This may seem counter-intuitive, because copying and duplicating code is usually a bad practice, but in system messages it is often needed. Although two concepts can be expressed with the same word in English, this doesn't necessarily mean they can be expressed with the same word in every language. "OK" is a good example: in English this is used for a generic button label, but in some languages they prefer to use a button label related to the operation which will be performed by the button. Another example is practically any adjective: a word like "multiple" changes according to gender in many languages, so you cannot reuse it to describe several different things, and you must create several separate messages.

If you are adding multiple identical messages, please add message documentation to describe the differences in their contexts. Don't worry about the extra work for translators. Translation memory helps a lot in these while keeping the flexibility to have different translations if needed.

Avoid fragmented or 'patchwork' messages
Languages have varying word orders, and complex grammatical and syntactic rules. It's very hard to translate "lego" messages, that is messages formed by multiple pieces of text, possibly with some indirection (also called "string concatenation").

It is better to make every message a complete phrase. Several sentences can usually be combined much more easily into a text block, if needed. When you want to combine several strings in one message, pass them in as parameters, as translators can order them correctly for their language when translating.

Messages quoting each other
An exception from the rule may be messages referring to one another: 'Enter the original author's name in the field labelled " " and click "  " when done'. This makes the message consistent when a software developer or wiki operator alters the messages "name" or "proceed" later. Without the int-trick, developers and operators would have to be aware of all related messages needing adjustment, when they alter one.

Don't use terms and templates that are specific to particular projects
MediaWiki is used by very diverse people, within the Wikimedia movement and outside of it. Even though it was originally built for an encyclopedia, it is now used for various kinds of content. Therefore, use general terms. For example, avoid terms like "article", and use "page" instead, unless you are absolutely sure that the feature you are developing will only be used on a site where pages are called "articles". Don't use "village pump", which is the name of an English Wikipedia community page, and use a generic term, such as "community discussion page", instead.

Don't assume that a certain template exists on all wikis. Templates are local to wikis. This applies to both the source messages and to their translations. If messages use templates, they will only work if a template is created on each wiki where the feature is deployed. It's best to avoid using templates in messages completely. If you really have to use them, you must document this clearly in the message documentation and in the extension installation instructions.

Separate times from dates in sentences
Some languages have to insert something between a date and a time which grammatically depends on other words in a sentence. Thus, they will not be able to use date/time combined. Others may find the combination convenient, thus it is usually the best choice to supply three parameter values (date/time, date, time) in such cases, and in each translation leave either the first one or last two unused as needed.

Avoid in messages
has several disadvantages. It can be anything (acronym, word, short phrase, etc.) and, depending on language, may need the use of  on each occurrence. No matter what, each message having  will need review in most wiki languages for each new wiki on which your code is installed. In the majority of cases, when there is not a general  configuration for a language, wiki operators will have to add or amend PHP code so as to get   for   working. This requires both more skills, and more understanding, than otherwise. It is more convenient to have generic references like "this wiki". This does not keep installations from locally altering these messages to use, but at least they don't have to, and they can postpone message adaption until the wiki is already running and used.

Avoid references to visual layout and positions
What is rendered where depends on skins. Most often screen layouts of languages written from left-to-right are mirrored compared to those used for languages written from right-to-left, but not always, and for some languages and wikis, not entirely. Handheld devices, narrow windows, and so on may show blocks underneath each other, that would appear side-by-side on larger displays. Since site- and user-written JavaScript scripts and gadgets can, and do, hide parts, or move things around in unpredictable ways, there is no reliable way of knowing the actual layout.

It is wrong to tie layout information to content languages, since the user interface language may not be the page's content language, and layout may be a mixture of the two depending on circumstances. Non-visual user agents like acoustic screen readers and other auxiliary devices do not even have a concept of visual layout. Thus, you should not refer to visual layout positions in the majority of cases, though semantic layout terms may still be used ("previous steps in the form", etc.).

MediaWiki does not support showing different messages or message fragments based on the current directionality of the interface (see T30997).

The upcoming browser and MediaWiki support for East and North Asian top-down writing will make screen layouts even more unpredictable, with at least eight possible layouts (left/right starting position, top/bottom starting position, and which happens first).

Avoid references to screen colours
The colour in which something is rendered depends on many factors, including skins, site- and user-written JavaScript scripts and gadgets, and local user agent over-rides for reasons of accessibility or technological limitations. Non-visual user agents like acoustic screen readers and other auxiliary devices do not even have a concept of colour. Thus, you should not refer to screen colours. (You should also not rely on colour alone as a mechanism for informing the user of state, for the same reason.)

Avoid untranslated HTML markup in messages
HTML markup not requiring translation, such as enclosing s, rulers above or below, and similar, should usually not be part of messages. They unnecessarily burden translators, increase message file size, and pose the risk to accidentally being altered or skipped in the translation process. In general, avoid raw HTML in messages if you can.

Messages are often longer than you think!
Skimming foreign language message files, you almost never find messages shorter than Chinese ones, rarely shorter than English ones, and usually much longer than English ones.

Especially in forms, in front of input fields, English messages tend to be terse, and short. That is often not kept in translations. Languages may lack the technical vocabulary present in English, and may require multiple words or even complete sentences to explain some concepts. For example, the brief English message "TSV file:" may have to be translated in a language as literally: " Please type a name here which denotes a collection of computer data that is comprised of a sequentially organised series of typewritten lines which themselves are organised as a series of informational fields each, where said fields of information are fenced, and the fences between them are single signs of the kind that slips a typewriter carriage forward to the next predefined position each. Here we go: _____ (thank you) " This is, admittedly, an extreme example, but you get the trait. Imagine this sentence in a column in a form where each word occupies a line of its own, and the input field is vertically centered in the next column. :-(

Avoid using very close, similar, or identical words to denote different things, or concepts
For example, pages may have older revisions (of a specific date, time, and edit), comprising past versions of said page. The words revision, and version can be used interchangeably. A problem arises, when versioned pages are revised, and the revision, i.e. the process of revising them, is being mentioned, too. This may not pose a serious problem when the two synonyms of "revision" have different translations. Do not rely on that, however. It is better to avoid the use of "revision" aka "version" altogether, then, so as to avoid it being misinterpreted.

Basic words may have unforeseen connotations, or not exist at all
There are some words that are hard to translate because of their very specific use in MediaWiki. Some may not be translated at all. For example, there is no word "user" relating to "someone who uses something" in several languages. Similarly, in Kölsch the English words "namespace" and "apartment" translate the same word. Also, in Kölsch, they say "corroborator and participant" in one word since any reference to "use" would too strongly imply "abuse". The term "wiki farm" is translated as "stable full of wikis", since a single-crop farm would be a contradiction in terms in the language, and not understood, etc..

Use, , and tags where needed
When talking about technical parameters, values, or keyboard inputs, mark them appropriately as such using the HTML tags, , or. Thus they are typographically set off form the normal text. That clarifies their sense to readers, avoiding confusion, errors and mis-representations. Ensure that your message handler allows such markup.

Symbols, colons, brackets, etc. are parts of messages
Many symbols are localisable, too. Some scripts have other kinds of brackets than the Latin script has. A colon may not be appropriate after a label or input prompt in some languages. Having those symbols included in messages helps to make better and less Anglo-centric translations, and also reduces code clutter.

For example, there are different quotation mark conventions used in «Norwegian», ”Swedish”, »Danish«, „German“, and 「Japanese」.

If you need to wrap some text in localized parentheses, brackets, or quotation marks, you can use the   or    or    messages like so:

Do not expect symbols and punctuation to survive translation
Languages written from right to left (as opposed to English) usually swap arrow symbols being presented with "next" and "previous" links, and their placement relative to a message text may, or may not, be inverted as well. Ellipsis may be translated to "etc.", or to words. Question marks, exclamation marks, colons will be placed other than at the end of a sentence, not at all, or twice. As a consequence, always include all of those in the text of your messages, and never try to insert them programmatically.

Use full stops
Do terminate normal sentences with full stops. This is often the only indicator for a translator to know that they are not headlines or list items, which may need to be translated differently.

Wikitext of links
Link anchors can be put into messages in several technical ways:

…  …, …   …, or
 * 1) via wikitext:
 * 1) via wikitext:
 * 1) the anchor text is a message in the MediaWiki namespace. Avoid it!

The latter is often hard or impossible to handle for translators, avoid fragmented or 'patchwork' messages here, too. Make sure that " " does not contain spaces.

Use meaningful link anchors
Take care with your wording. Link anchors play an important role in search engine assessment of pages – both the words linked, and the target anchor. Make sure that the anchor describes the target page well. Always avoid commonplace and generic words. For example, "Click here" is an absolute no-go, since target pages are almost never about "click here". Do not put that in sentences around links either, because "here" was not the place to click. Instead, Use precise action words telling what a user will get to when following the link, such as "You can upload a file if you wish."

See also Help users predict where they are going, and mystery meat navigation, and The main reasons why we shouldn't use click here as link text.

Avoid jargon and slang
Avoid developer and power user jargon in messages. Try to use a simple language whenever possible. Avoid saying "success", "successfully", "fail", "error occurred while", etc., when you want to notify the user that something happened or didn't happen. This comes from developers' perspective of seeing everything as true or false, but users usually just want to know what actually happened or didn't, and what they should do about it (if at all). So:


 * "The file was successfully renamed" -> "The file was renamed"
 * "File renaming failed" -> "There is a file with this name already. Please choose a different name."

Be aware of whitespace and line breaks
MediaWiki's localised messages usually get edited within the wiki, either by wiki operations on live wikis, or by the translators on translatewiki.net. You should be aware of how whitespace, especially at the beginning or end of your message, will affect editors:


 * Spaces and line breaks (newlines) at the end of the message are always automatically removed by the wikitext editor. Your message must not end with a space or line break, as it will be lost when it's edited on the wiki.
 * Spaces and line breaks at the beginning are not automatically removed, but they are likely to be removed by accident during editing, and should be avoided.

Start and end your message with active text; if you need a newline or paragraph break around it, your surrounding code should deal with adding it to the returned text.

There are some messages which require a space at the end, such as 'word-separator' (which consists of just a space character in most languages). To support such use cases, the following HTML entities are allowed in messages and transformed to the actual characters, even if the message otherwise doesn't allow wikitext or HTML formatting:


 * – space
 * or  – non-breaking space
 * – soft hyphen

On a related note, any other syntax elements affected by pre-save transforms also must not be used in messages, as they will be transformed when the message is edited on the wiki.

Use standard capitalisation
Capitalisation gives hints to translators as to what they are translating, such as single words, list or menu items, phrases, or full sentences. Correct (standard) capitalisation may also play a role in search engines' assessment of your pages. MediaWiki uses sentence case (The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog) in interface messages.

Always remember that many writing systems don't have capital letters at all, and some of those that do have them, use them differently from English. Therefore, don't use ALL-CAPS for emphasis. Use CSS, or HTML or  per below:

Emphasis
In normal text, emphasis like boldface or italics and similar should be part of message texts. Local conventions on emphasis often vary, especially some Asian scripts have their own. Translators must be able to adjust emphasis to their target languages and areas. Try to use "" and "" in your user interface to allow mark-up on a per language or per script basis.

In modern screen layouts of English and European styles, emphasis becomes less used. Do convey it in your still, as it may give valuable hints as to how to translate. Emphasis can and should be used in other cultural contexts as appropriate, provided that translators know about it. 

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