This page contains some rules and tips how to make your translation work without problems and look good.
The first rule is to do a translation, which gives the same message as the original. This does not mean that you should do literal translation word by word, to the contrary, you should try to make your translating as fluent as possible. It means that you should not add extra information which is not relevant, extra formatting (colors, font size), extra links to any pages which may or may not exist and anything else the original does not contain. This is to keep the default interface clean and simple and to leave the customization to administrators. Common problems are that translators link to pages they assume to exist (for example in Wikipedia), refer to extensions which are not installed by default or introduce extra formatting which is not in harmony.
If you need to refer to name of the site, you can use magic variables like {{SITENAME}}. If your language uses inflection, you should talk to the developers about implementing some support for it. Once this is done you can use forms like {{GRAMMAR:genitive|{{SITENAME}}}} to refer to the sitename in genitive. Another magic word is {{PLURAL}}. Talk to the developers if you are not sure if it works. Its syntax is {{PLURAL:$n|first form|second form|nth form}} up to any number of forms as required.
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