Help:Extension:Translate/gpe



De Translate extension dey enhance MediaWiki plus essential features dem need make dem do translation work. Dem fi use am translate de content pages, de wiki ein interface den even oda software products, as dem use am for translatewiki.net. De Translate extension dey cam plus easy to use translation interface wey dem fi separate de content structure from de text content wey dey hia make dem translate, e dey show de translatable text per to translators by e dey split de content go manageable units. Dem track each unit automatically for changes, den translators immediately dey see what dey hia make dem update for specific page or thru out de wiki.

Dem dey use de Translate extension make dem translate de MediaWiki ein user interface den oda software projects for translatewiki.net by hundreds of translators every month. For userbase.kde.org dem dey use am translate almost thousand content pages plus user documentation. E be easy make dem start dey use de Translate extension, but for de same tym e san dey scale up den provide advanced reporting, reviewing den workflow features.

Features


Interface: De main feature for de Translate extension be simple yet functional translation interface. Besides de essential information lyk message definition den documentation, you san so fi view translations for oda languages insyd. If dem change definition, you go see de changes. De extension dey come plus sum built-in checks, wey go fi help plus common mistakes lyk unbalanced brackets den unused variables. E dey depend for de configuration top, der san so be suggestions from translation memory den machine translation services lyk those of Google Translate, Microsoft ein Bing Translator den Apertium.

Dem enhance de usability for de translation interface plus JavaScript den AJAX. De backend dey provide WebAPIs wey dem fi use insyd mobile interfaces or interfaces dem tailor go specific kind of content. Esan so be possible say you go fi export messages for translation for oda off-line den on-line tools insyd wey dey accept de Gettext po file format.

Message groups den tasks: Dem build chaw of de features around two basic concepts: message groups den tasks.

Sam message group dey represent sam collection of messages. One content page go be one message group, wer, for de simplest form insyd, each paragraph go be one message for dat group insyd. Messages wey dey dem use for each MediaWiki extension form insyd sam message group for translatewiki.net top – sam few of de largest extensions get multiple groups. You san go fi make sam group of groups, lyk All newsletters anaa All Translate extension messages. Chaw statistics den de tasks dey work for de message group basis top.

De tasks, anaa for oda words insyd different listings of messages for sam message group insyd, facilitate different dey use cases. Normally sam translator dey get sam list of all untranslated messages for sam chosen message group insyd, but tasks dey wey you go fi review messages anaa just get sam list of all messages, translated anaa naah.



Reporting den statistics: De extension get extensive reporting features wey dey rang from sam view of untranslated messages across all message groups for sam given language go lists of translators per language plus dema activity level.

Content translation: If you ever try say you go translate content for MediaWiki insyd widout any tools, you know say eneva dey scale. De versions dem translate dey get out of date wey no way dey wey go fi track changes go de master page, so chaw half-translated den outdated translations dey widout clear overview for de overall status. Translators often dey feel discourage if dem no dey fi job plus small manageable pieces of text. Translators no dey find wat dem go job for top anaa wat dey hiaa make dem update. De users san so dey conf by information wey be outdated.

We dey solve all dis plus de Translate extension den ein page translation feature. Edey add sam bit of overhead for de pages wey dey hia translation top, but de benefits far dey outweigh dis. Essentially you only dey hia say you go mark de parts of de page wey dey hia translation. De extension dey split such parts go paragraph sized units insyd wey edey create sam message group give dem. Afta dat translators go fi use all de features wey dem describe above. For addition you go fi add sam language bar easily plus de tag anaa get links automatically make you go de user ein preferred language version (only) if edey exist, by say you go use de links of de form Special:MyLanguage/Pagename.

For more info make pop de tutorial How you go fi set up sam content page for translation den de in-depth documentation of de page translation feature.

Developers: The extension comes with built-in support for many common translation file formats, like Java properties and Gettext po files. It has an extensive set of tools, both in-wiki and on the command line, to efficiently import and export translations.

Searching: Without a search feature, it is difficult for translators to find specific messages they want to translate. Traversing all the translations or strings of the project is inefficient. Also, translators often want to check how a specific term was translated in a certain language across the project.

This is solved by the special page Special:SearchTranslations. Translators can find the messages containing certain terms in any language and filter by various criteria: this is the default. After searching, they can switch the results to the translations of said messages, for instance to find the existing, missing or outdated translations of a certain term.



Make you Use cases
You can translate almost anything with the Translate extension. Naturally there are specialized tools for translation of certain kind of content like video subtitles, that are better done with those tools, but in general Translate performs very well with any kind of text that can be split into messages with length ranging from one word up to one large paragraph. Longer messages become unwieldy to translate and are just harder to work with.

The three primary use cases that the Translate extension supports are content translation, local interface translation and software translation. All of them are covered in the following sections, with links to tutorials and to reference documentation or in-depth topical help where available. Of the three use cases the interface translation has been utilized the least.

Content translation


Most wikis have content they would like to be available in multiple languages. Whether just a few or hundreds of pages, it doesn't matter. In order to prevent wasting translator's time, pages should be marked for translation only when they are reasonably stable. Each change that is made afterwards can affect tens or hundreds of old translations, and the time needed to update them adds up. Especially with volunteer translators, you should be aware of this aspect, and respect the time they spend making translations and updates, avoiding unnecessary work. If you use the Translate extension to translate pages, you are already well on your way to using the translator time available in the most effective and efficient way.

The way the Translate extension splits up a page into paragraph sized units does not leave too much freedom for translators to change the content. This is usually a good thing and is ideal where continuity and consistency of content across languages is desired. It can be worked around, but in principle this way of doing translations is not generally suitable, for example, for Wikipedia articles, which usually are totally independent of each other. Even if they originally start as a translation from a different language, they usually begin living their own independent life from the original version. With Translate, the original page is always the main version, and new content cannot be developed in translated versions.

With these limitations in mind there are still plenty of cases where this feature is a perfect match. Most, if not all, user documentation falls into this category as well as news-like content that does not change once written. If you have the Translate extension already installed and access rights configured, try creating a page and wrapping the whole text inside and follow the links, or follow the tutorial How to prepare a page for translation.

Dem go fi aggregate Groups of pages togeda plus de Special:AggregateGroups page.



Local interface translation wey dey multilingual wikis insyd
One thing almost every wiki has customized is the sidebar. It is possible to create a message group for the custom sidebar messages and also for other local interface customisations.

One interesting expansion is the multilingual pages or templates built with the magic word. The translatewiki.net main page and some Wikimedia Commons templates are good examples of this. The magic word is an alternative to the content translation feature and it is more suitable to mark-up heavy pages just like the translatewiki.net main page. Another nice feature is that the language of the page automatically follows the user interface language, so there is no need for a language bar, although you might want to have an interface language selector instead.

Setting this up is currently a bit more complicated than content translation and needs software configuration, but it is all covered in the tutorial How to make an interface message group.

Software translation
The Translate extension is a good fit for translating software interface messages. At translatewiki.net, it is used to translate dozens of software products from games to web applications. The Translate extension supports reading and updating translations from and to common formats used in web development including Java properties, Gettext and Yaml files.

Change tracking is also available for externally tracked files, because internally the extension uses a cached derivative version of the localisation files where the source text and its translations are stored, instead of using them directly in their original format. Translation administrators can either use the web interface or a command line interface to check new message definitions and "fuzzy" (request update of) translations when they need updating. This works regardless of the underlying file format or version control system (if any).

With simple command line tools, translation administrators can easily import even a large set of existing translations and with just one command they can export all translations in the correct format and in the correct directory structure. You can export directly to your VCS repository checkout, where you can easily commit changes and new files.



Further reading den tutorials


For translators den translation administrators

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For translation administrators

 * [Tutorial]
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Reference documents give developers

 * - for be enough for most cases insyd.
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 * - Edey describe de jobs wey dey insyd if dem mark sam page for translation anaa if dem translate sam section
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 * - Edey describe de jobs wey dey insyd if dem mark sam page for translation anaa if dem translate sam section
 * - Edey describe de jobs wey dey insyd if dem mark sam page for translation anaa if dem translate sam section
 * - Edey describe de jobs wey dey insyd if dem mark sam page for translation anaa if dem translate sam section
 * - Edey describe de jobs wey dey insyd if dem mark sam page for translation anaa if dem translate sam section

Related

 * - General localisation tutorial for developers, for use at hackathons & trainings
 * - Adds support for translating SVG files
 * - Provides web fonts and input methods
 * m:Translatability – things to think about when creating pages or processes on multilingual wikis
 * m:Tech/Translators/List - Add yourself to the list of currently active tech translators
 * m:Tech/Translators/List - Add yourself to the list of currently active tech translators