Wikimedia Language engineering

About the Team
The Wikimedia Foundation Language Engineering team consists of 7 opensource community members, developers and designers and have a combined working knowledge of over 15 languages. We work on projects that enable the MediaWiki platform to support every language on the planet.

More about: Localization (L10n)

Extensions
Extension:Translate: The Translate extension is a feature-rich extension that lets users translate software strings and pages in their browser. For both software and page translation, it supports translation memory, statistics by group and language, advanced grammar support for multiple languages and more.

Extension:Narayam: Narayam is a tool that lets users input text in their native language without needing special software to do so. It is used in many Indic-language wikis to enable users to type in their own language from any computer, regardless of whether that computer has proper set-up for their script.

Extension:WebFonts: This extension, like the Narayam extension, makes it easier for users to use MediaWiki without needing special fonts on their computer. It uses the CSS web font technology in an innovative way to provide fonts for scripts that users' computers may not otherwise support.



Extension:UniversalLanguageSelector: The Universal Language Selector (ULS) provides a flexible method of selecting and configuring a language to use in the User Interface. It provides options to select Fonts and Input Method. Languages can be searched using the ISO language code, language name written in current user interface language or in its own script(autonym). Depending upon the users location or browser/operating system's language, the user interface language will be suggested. Cross language searches - i.e. using any script, can also be done.

Project Milkshake
Project Milkshake aims to make generic jQuery components for commonly needed internationalization feature components that have been developed for use through MediaWiki in Wikimedia Projects. These include input methods, web-fonts, and language grammar rules.

To allow easy participation the source code repositories are hosted on GitHub. Components are dual licensed as GPL and MIT as much as possible to allow wide adoption.

Language Coverage
More than 300 languages are provided with internationalization support at various levels across Wikimedia projects. Wikipedia being the largest with 285 languages. The tools created and maintained by the WMF Language Engineering team are constantly updated to increase the number of languages covered by them. The goal is to prepare all languages to provide the same level of functionalities to be used just as well as English.

Language Coverage Matrix: The Language Support Matrix is a document detailing the basic and extended requirement for supporting a language and the current status of these requirements. This project intends to identify features and needs that would establish the development priority in terms of increasing the coverage for language support for all Wikimedia projects. This is the source for the data that will be queried and visualized through the Language Coverage Dashboard.

Community and Outreach
Language Mavens: The Mavens program is aimed to develop a long-term user group that will be instrumental in helping other language community members learn more about the latest language features and tools being rolled out. Language tools are constantly evolving and this program will help scale the efforts of the small engineering team to support hundreds of languages through close collaboration with the language communities. More details about the activities and scope of the Maven program can be read in the Language Maven Program page. Sign Up!

 Communication 
 * mediawiki-i18n Mailing list
 * IRC channel #mediawiki-i18n (Freenode)
 * Team Blog

 Public Discussions and Media
 * Office hour - 2nd Wednesday/month | logs
 * Bug triage - 4th Wednesday/month | logs
 * Bi-weekly sprint demos
 * Team Videos
 * Presentations

 Internationalize your code
 * Coding tutorial
 * Translation Resources
 * Technical glossary

 Use our language extensions
 * Language and Translation extensions
 * Installation guide
 * Language Coverage Status
 * Language Testing Plan

 Join your language community
 * Provide translation for interfaces
 * Find translators in your language
 * Become a Language Maven
 * Web resources for your language
 * GSoC 2013 - Internationalization Project Tracker

 Report and fix language issues
 * File a bug on bugzilla
 * Fix open bugs by submitting a patch
 * Discuss issues on the mailing list
 * Get live help on IRC