Topic on User talk:Shirayuki

Hi Shirayuki,

I see you worked on making it possible to translate the section Results of on-wiki discussions on Talk pages consultation 2019/Phase 1 report, or at least the beginning of it. I do translations to French. On Thursday-Friday (it was during the night), I asked the Wikimedia staff to make the whole page translatable. I thought they would do it themselves as this was their report, but I’m glad to see that a volunteer (if you are actually one) is available to do the work — .

In your first edit, you added newlines in the table of themes, in the column ‘Summary of the theme’. This caused the appearance of line breaks in the rendered table! You should remove these line breaks.

I also want to translate the rest of the page (the subsections and the conclusions), so I hope you aim to finish the work.

In this, I would like to be able to provide a translation of the quotations, where the quotations in my language have no translation and the others have a translation in my language, just like it’s done in the original in English. To achieve this, I suggest you reduce that complex and ugly code by creating a template. It shall take three parameters, so you would call it in this form: {{Quotation with original|original language|direction of original|original quotation|translated quotation}} and in the page it would put the quotations with the same code they have now (I suppose there’s a magic word to insert the current language’s code; otherwise, the template might require it as another parameter). If the original is in the target language, then we could use the template with one parameter, or use another {{Quotation|quotation}} template. I would have all this to translate in the translation interface, and then I could have the original text either in my language and without a translation or in another language and with a translation. Copying the original text in every translation will create redundant data, but currently it’s not much data, and my solution is a way to make this render very well for readers without us having to work much. If we get to frequently have presentations like this, then we might ask the MediaWiki developers to implement a feature to manage such cases without creating redundant data.

I hope it’s okay for you. Maybe you already had these ideas. If you need help, you might ask the other administrators of MediaWiki or the WMF staff. If you don’t want to work on adding translation tags in the rest of the page, I can do it for you — like you, I’m a volunteer who is keen to work for others. Then I’ll still need you to eventually mark the page for translation. Thank you for your work — !

I see that for anchors like #Indentation, you only made the word ‘Indentation’ translatable, and if there are several anchors separated with commas, you made every anchor text individually translatable. I don’t think it is a good idea, because punctuation vary between languages, e.g. some language might prefer having the sharp at the end (‘Indentation#’) or using semicolons instead of commas. Therefore punctuation should be considered as texts to translate, and preferably you will make a whole sentence or line of text directly translatable instead of making translatable many pieces of it. As it is only a few characters, it doesn’t significantly add work for translators, and then we better understand what the text means.

This is my opinion, but maybe you are completely sure about what you’re doing. Anyway what you did is convenient for my language, so it’s not a problem for me if you don’t change it, but I still like to say it questions me.

As you’re Japanese, you might know much more than me how much the use of punctuation can vary from a language to another — .

Actually you can use variables to refer to the original quotation I talked about above. I stupidly forgot that we could use a variable. So there will not be any redundancy and my idea is perfect. Yay for MediaWiki!

So I formatted the page according to my suggestions. I created Template:Quotation with original. I put translation tags (I still don’t feel it’s necessary to put as many tags as you do). The page now needs to be marked for translation. Please do it if you can — !

Hi Shirayuki,

I saw you worked again on the page. Well, I don’t like at all what you did… You added useless parameters (translation 2 and others, whereas this parameter must be used where there are two people who talk) to my ‘quotations with original’ and focused the translations on this. This won’t work. Also, again you put many <translate> tags. Many times you wrote </translate> in the code and <translate> immediately after. Why is this useful for? You say ‘<tvar> doesn’t work on multiple lines;’ I don’t know how you know that, and furthermore you removed all my tvars… Can you give me an explanation?

Please consider it’s not comfortable for me to write messages to you without getting any reply. As we have different point of views, I’d be happy if we could discuss things before coming to editing conflicts. Say something. Insult me if you want, but say something, please!

"translation2" parameter is required to recognize whether the quotation is translated or not. (by comparing with "translation" parameter)

The quotation is prepended with its language code ([en]). If the quotation is untranslated, the language should be [en] not [{{PAGELANGUAGE}}]!

<tvar>s containing multiple lines are ignored by Extension:Translate .

Can I remove language codes (other than original quotation)? If so, recognizing whether translated or not will be unnecessary.

Ow, I hadn’t seen you had messed up the template… If the quotation is untranslated, it means it uses the page language, otherwise the person who writes must translate. If the source language is English, as a translator I will provide a translation.

E.g, imagine this: {{Quotation with original | original = <tvar|original>Something</>}}

The translation in French will be: {{Quotation with original | lang = en | dir = ltr | original = $original | translation = Quelque chose}} (‘Quelque chose’ is ‘Something’ in French).

And if the original text is: {{Quotation with original | lang = fr | dir = ltr | original = <tvar|original>Quelque chose</> | translation = Something}}

Then the translation in French will be: {{Quotation with original | original = $original}}

But in Spanish it will be: {{Quotation with original | lang = fr | dir = ltr | original = $original | translation = Alguna cosa}}

Do you understand it better now — ? Sorry if I wasn’t clear enough the first time.

The translation parameter already tells whether the quotation is translated or not… If there is no translation, you must just give the original parameter. So I don’t understand your idea.

Can you prove that <tvar> doesn’t work with multiple lines? Have you already tested? Maybe I’m weird, but I’m not convinced.

Thank you for your answer and your motivation anyway — . For now, I feel you’ve just messed things whereas everything was cleanly prepared. Also, I still don’t understand why you write </translate> then <translate> just after.

My idea with my quotation template will cause redundancy about the lang and dir info, because every language which is not the original language of the translation will have those lang and dir values. Actually I have a proportional sight: those lang and dir are very short data compared to the quotations, so it’s fair and clean to repeat them every time but once.

We could also imagine having: {{Quotation with original | lang = en | dir = ltr | original = Something | translation = <translate>Something</translate>}}. Then in the template {{#ifeq: {{{lang|}}} | {{PAGELANGUAGE}} | <!-- write the translation -->}}. It would be okay, and then the redundancy would be to repeat the original quotation once. But from my point of view, it’s important that translators see in the interface that they are translating quotations. And in this case, the page contains useless info, whereas with my previous idea, every page in each language contains only the necessary info. Well, you’re the admin, do it the way you want. Anyway I still don’t see the need for translation 22 parameters or something else.

Parameters are very confusing.

first quotation	second quotation
original	original 2	(if lang is en) used for comparison with "translation2".
translation	translation 2	(if lang is NOT en) used for comparison with "translation2".
translation2	translation 22	used for translating

Patterns:

original	translation	translation2	result
original[fr]	translation[en]	translation2[en]=untranslated	original and translation are shown
original[fr]	translation[en]	translation2[ja]=translated	original and translation2 are shown
original[en]	-	translation2[en]=untranslated	original is shown
original[en]	-	translation2[ja]=translated	original and translation2 are shown

See also Template:Quotation with original/testcases

About comparison, see the template Template:WithEn and examples: Category:Archived_skins, Category:Archived_skins/ja

OK… I see you try to deal with the case when no translation in the page language is provided, whereas I was completely forgetting this case — . It’s too bad that there’s no magic word that gives en when untranslated and {{PAGELANGUAGE}} only when translated (if it was the case, my first solution, suggesting that we should translate the whole template with <tvar> for original, would have worked). I’m still not convinced that <tvar> doesn’t work on multiple lines (I don’t see why it wouldn’t, at least if there’s no empty line), but anyway it seems we won’t use it.

So, yes, we can remove the display of the language code of the translation. I understand it will make things easier. Thank you.

The source value should also be translatable (e.g. ‘French Wikipedia’ will be ‘Wikipédia francophone’ in French).

I finally understood that you write </translate><translate> to split paragraphs in several translatable parts. As there were newlines, I thought the parts were different paragraphs… But well, they’re not and you prefer when original strings are one sentence long. OK then, boss — . Maybe the Translate extension should provide a setting to make this automatic.

Please don’t be long because non-English-speaking users may be waiting for a translation of the report before they participate to the Phase 2 of the consultation. Actually an user told me he wanted to read a translation (because he does not understand English well) before he answers to the questions of Phase 2. Do you prefer that I prepare the page by myself? (If you gives no input within a few days, I’ll probably do it — Phase 2 ends in two weeks, June 15th.)

Re Shirayuki,

So the report is fully translatable now. It’s great — . I’m working on it.

There are still a few weird things.

• The translation2 (and translation 22) parameters are still there. At least you should give them better names, such as translation2en or translation to en, so that it’s less confusing. Well, I hope that a template I created myself won’t be left with ugly parameter names — .
• The translation in English remains shown before a translation in another language. Just see here. Actually it’s not a so bad idea because it makes clear that we often translated from English, but it is not mandatory, and it is quite evident that we translated from English because it’s what we do all the time.
• If you keep the translation2en parameters, you should at least re-add the language codes before the translations (so you will respect the original presentation from the WMF staff).
• Note that translators may not see if they are translating a message which was originally in English. And if they see, they will have non-translations to provide; in my case I’m using [fr] as placeholder.
  • My first solution which suggested giving the whole template to translate (well, I don’t know what I should say instead of ‘template’ to talk about its instance on the page — may you know?) cared about this.
  • Another interesting solution would be to move the source parameter before the quotation texts, so the translator would see ‘Wikipedia in your language’ and they’ll immediately know they don’t have to translate (while here we must scroll down a little to see this, and we must care about when we reach quotations).
  • We could also think about giving the original text to translate, so we would have original, translation2en (or simply translation) and translation alt where the latter contains the same data as original but is translatable and is used only if it’s not in the same language as original and its content is different. But this will be impractical for translators who don’t understand the source language.

Haven’t you already planned to fix all this — ?

Indeed one of my colleagues provided new translations to messages that were originally in French — . So would you recommend something?

I tested it Special:Diff/3255473. If needed, describe in message documentation page (/qqq page). e.g. Translations:Talk_pages_consultation_2019/Phase_1_report/397/qqq

You can use {{#language:ja}} to show language name.

I don’t need to show language name…

But well, I applied what I felt is good. We only need twenty lines in the template code, and we don’t need the translation2 parameters. I also put the source at the top (in the code) as I told you. Don’t you feel it’s better this way? Now the page needs to be remarked for translation (and the twice translated quotations should reappear).

Your template code was very messy, whereas it can be achieved with a few lines — .

As I removed the translation2 parameters and used only translation, you should quickly remark the report for translation, because the translated versions are broken for now.

See Template:Quotation_with_original/testcases/ja#Untranslated. Two English text "Here is some text." are shown!

Yes but it doesn’t matter. If you want, I can add a small condition to avoid this, but well, I thought it was clearer if we showed it this way. Nevertheless, the content should be translated. If it’s not, the content should still be readable, but it’s not dramatic if it’s a bit ‘buggy’.

I think it is waste of space about large quotation.

Well, I fixed it. If ‘it doesn’t matter,’ then it can be as you prefer — .

Use language name in /qqq pages e.g. "{{warning|1={{#language:ja}} translators: there is no need to translate this translation unit.}}"

No need to change the template.

It’s faster to put placeholders than to write warnings. This would have made many warnings.

The template needed to be simplified… Your code was very redundant and hard to understand. The code I put is much easier to maintain.

But now the page needs to be remarked for translation, please!

Is it okay now? The page still needs to be remarked for translation for all this to work.

Thank you so much for all! So far I’ve translated the whole report. I hope it fits you well like it is. (And sorry for my double space mistake and thank you for having fixed it — .)

I made some new fixes in the original text (as I noticed things that had to be fixed), so for this to be really well, you should mark the page for translation again.

It’s been nice to see that there are motivated volunteer people to make things work here.