Wikimedia Language engineering/Reports/2019/May

Monthly updates from the Wikimedia Language team about changes to internationalization and translation and other language support features. Names of people assumed to contribute as volunteers are in bold text.

Content Translation
Content Translation allows people to translate Wikipedia articles. Also check out out the newsletter and updates about version 2.




 * The new version is the only version available for new translations, even when started through the URL. Old translations started with version 1 will still use it for backwards compatibility.
 * Improved support for references by not translating reference contents automatically since information such as book titles is often kept untranslated, and avoid warnings insisting to translate the contents of the reference list.
 * Support for standard visual components on the new translation dialog.
 * Better guidance by communicating that publishing is only allowed to experienced editors for wikis configured in such way. Configuration has not been applied to any yet, and should make obsolete the use of abuse filters that some communities implemented.
 * Better guidance by providing more detailed publish options in a dialog and more detailed information when users are not allowed to publish translations with too much unmodified contents.
 * Improved persistency for templates by preventing user changes to get lost across sessions.
 * Better support for exploring links in the source document.
 * Performance improvements by reducing the number of code modules delivered to users, and regressions corrected for placeholder icons, and for event logging of suggestions.
 * Better user guidance by communicating the English Wikipedia limitation to only allow publishing to extended confirmed users in a more detailed way and before the user makes the translation effort.
 * Better control to start a translation by allowing to select pages from different namespaces, not just the main (article) namespace. Some namespaces such as file, gadget, template or talk are still excluded.
 * More reliable process for correctly restoring and publishing translations that start with an empty paragraph.
 * More reliable visual alignment of paragraphs between original and translated content by adapting to paragraphs becoming shorter and fixing regressions.
 * More precise calculation of the percentage of unmodified contents for the whole document, and custom adjustments on a per wiki basis.
 * Better connection between warnings and the affected content by using color icons in the issue messages that match the warning or error marks in content.
 * More reliable editing support by recalculating the editing area size to elements that take time to load which prevent unnecessary scrollbars.
 * Cleaner process for starting a new translation by reducing the terms of use text, and adjusting the edit area spacing for the translation title.

Translate
Wikimedia's software is translated to hundreds of languages using the Translate extension for MediaWiki. In addition it is used to translate help pages, newsletters, policies, announcements, banners, etc. It is installed on Wikimedia special projects, translatewiki.net and many other sites. Translate is part of MLEB.


 * Add non-priority languages to MessageGroupStats if priorityforce is false. (T221498)
 * Fix ManageMessageGroups from re-appearing after submission. (T218289)
 * Replace checkbox with radio buttons on Special:ManageMessageGroups. (T160606)
 * Fix notice appearing on TwnMainPage due to invalid return format. (T220583)
 * Fix incorrect link to the message on translate editor. (T222588)
 * Make first column's width in language list box always adapt to content. (T220858)
 * Fix tabs on message table when using Timeless skin. (Patch)

And a bunch of other behind the scenes improvements. Please follow this link to see a full list of patches submitted to the extension during this month.

Usage data

 * Translatable pages: Meta 4901 (+33); MediaWiki.org 4225 (+60); Commons 1248 (+35) [ 1][ 2][ 3]
 * Translate extension is installed on 209 (+0) wikis Wikiapiary

Universal Language Selector
Universal Language Selector provides language selector, list of suggested languages, input methods and web fonts. It is part of MLEB.



Other extensions
Babel (part of MLEB):



cldr (Common Locale Data Repository) (part of MLEB):



CleanChanges (part of MLEB):



LocalisationUpdate (part of MLEB):



TranslationNotifications:



MediaWiki core internationalization
Changes to translations and equivalent localisation data (magic words, namespace names) are not included in this list. The volunteer translators are updating translations every day to keep up with changes.



Project Milkshake
Project Milkshake consists of four re-usable jquery internationalization libraries.

jquery.i18n



jquery.uls



jquery.webfonts



jquery.ime


 * To celebrate Africa Day, keyboard layouts for multiple new languages of Africa were released. jquery.ime now completely covers all the languages on Africa in which there is a Wikipedia or an active Incubator. (Announcement on the African Wikimedians mailing list.)



translatewiki.net
See also translatewiki.net news page.