Help:Extension:Translate/Translation example



Welcome, glorious translator. We have a lot of work to do, so let’s get over the basics very quickly so that you can start as soon as possible. After this tutorial you’ll know how to use your personal translation tool set. The effects will be permanent, so if you don’t want to learn how to use it, please stop reading now.

We hope that wherever you come from, the translation administrators have already setup something to translate. This tutorial uses the Fréttinga page that is created in the tutorial for translation administrators. The things covered here do not depend on that particular page, and apply to everything you can translate with this tool.

Maybe you already have a link from someone asking you to translate something. If not, you can check Special:LanguageStats, the translator dashboard, in your wiki for something to translate. If you just want to see how it works in general, you can still read along and watch the screenshots to get an impression of it.

Usually you cannot make translations without asking for permissions. Some wikis however have enabled translation to all users. You will quickly notice if you lack the rights to translate. If this is the case, contact a translation administrator of your wiki. Let’s start with getting to the translation view.


 * 1a. Go to the Fréttinga page.
 * 2a. Click the "Translate this page" link (if it does not show up you don’t have permission to translate).

Or you can try:


 * 1b. Go to the translator dashboard.
 * 2b. Click the name of any message group that has untranslated messages.

Messages to translate are grouped by "message group": Each translatable page is a message group, but there can be other kinds of message groups too.


 * 3. Choose a language other than the language of the source text (which usually is English or ).

Translation editor
This view and variations of it are the basic interface you will working in. The long list of messages still to be translated may occasionally depress you, but fortunately we don’t actually need to watch that list so often. You should see at least some untranslated messages here. Let’s make your first translation. Click a link in the left column to get a popup window with the translation editor. You will see the source text you need to translate and a text area where you can write your translation. If you clicked the first message listed for the page Fréttinga, it should say "Fréttinga" as the content. Since it is a name, you don’t usually need to change it, except if your language uses a different writing system, in which case you can choose to transliterate it. Then just click save and you are done!


 * 4. Click the message name on the left column.
 * 5. In the popup dialog, write the translation of the source text in the place reserved for it.
 * 6. Click "Save".

Depending on the configuration of the wiki, you may also see other things in the popup besides the source text. There may be suggestions from translation memories or machine translation systems. There can be a section for tips that provide crucial information that you need to use to make a correct translation. So if there are tips, read them carefully. If there are no tips and you feel like you need them, ask someone in the wiki to add them; if you are knowledgeable enough about the text that needs translation, add them yourself. These tips help you to translate better and faster. Don’t feel ashamed to ask for clarifications – it’s highly likely that the other tens or hundreds translators are wasting their time thinking of the same issues.

One more thing about the translation aids: if you benefit from seeing the message translated into other languages as additional tip, go to your preferences –> Editing –> Translation options and add one or more assistant languages for yourself.

Usually there is no need to add a summary if you are making a new translation, unless you want to clarify some decisions you made in terminology or formatting. When changing existing translations it’s polite to mention "Fixed a spelling error" or "Use term X consistently" and so on, to help other translators understand and improve collaboration. Feel free to make a few more translations and try out the other buttons. Clicking a small downwards-pointing arrow next to suggestions and source text will immediately paste that text in the text area, overwriting anything already in that text area.

Translation view
Here we are again, watching the list with untranslated messages. If you refresh the page, the list should now be shorter, or even empty. The view has the usual paging controls and description of the group, but more interesting at the top there are some selectors for choosing language, message group and task.

All message groups function the same way, and you don’t need to worry about them too much. The important thing is that you always need to choose a message group to work on, and things like statistics and completion percentages are calculated on message group level.

From the task selector, you can switch the view suitable for doing other tasks, like review. Depending on the configuration, you should see at least "Review all translations" and possibly "Accept translations". Choose "Review all" and you should see the translations you made together with the source texts. Again, depending on the configuration, you may also see buttons that say "Accept", but grayed out because you cannot accept your own translations. Read more about reviewing translations and other quality control methods in the quality control page.

The page can also contain the message group status in the top right corner of the message group description, which can be set for each language of the group; if you see a dropdown selector of the possible states, it means that you can change it, and you should update it when you are working on the translation or if you are reviewing it. See more about workflow states in the message group states page.

Important concepts


You already know what a message group or a task is, and have seen the translation editor popup and assistant languages. Now the translation administrator may have continued their page translation tutorial and changed the contents of the page Fréttinga. When the text that must be translated changes, it will show up again in the list of untranslated messages, prefixed with the text " ". This is just a marker to make it obvious that a translation needs updating.

When updating translations, be sure to remove the " " text if the translation is okay, otherwise it isn’t considered translated by the wiki. In some cases you should even add yourself the " " text to a translation, if you know it is incorrect, but don’t know how to fix it. Be careful about the syntax, it must be exactly right. " " may also be added automatically when a new translation is saved, if the automatic checks find likely issues in the translation, like for example unbalanced link syntax missing the other "&#93;" character. You should also get a warning about these when translating.

The outdated translations of translatable pages are marked with a reddish color, shown on the screenshot. If you now return to the translated page by clicking the link on the message group description, you should see that your translations are already there. Most of the translations you will make are applied immediately, with exception about fuzzy messages and some message groups, like many of those in translatewiki.net, where the translation are regularly and manually exported by translation administrators to the software they are used in.

One more useful tip when translating translatable pages: Magic words like  0  will format the output in the translation language, not in the language of the source text. If you like, you can read more on how magic words work and should be used in translations. This is not required reading, though.