Translating:Translatable/en

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Interface translation

translatewiki.net
Introduction
Getting started
How to start
Translatable
Regional settings
Process overview
Other
Versions statistics
Group statistics
See also
Localisation guidelines
Translating offline
FAQ
Support

Translatable

Localisation is not only about translating messages, it also includes customizing everything from time formats to grammatical features like inflection.

Text

Interface messages

Translating the interface messages is the most important thing to do. These can be translated using Special:Translate. In total there are about 1,900 messages.

Extension messages

Almost all extensions containing interface messages can be translated using Special:Translate. translatewiki.net supports in-wiki translation for about 210 extensions (added functionality) for MediaWiki. Installed extensions are usually mentioned on Special:Version. In total the extensions contain about 3,700 messages that can be translated. A few extensions that are in active development or use cannot currently be supported. We are trying to work with the authors of those extensions to get support in translatewiki.net.

Other messages

The following message groups can be translated using Special:Magic:

• Namespace names – User, Help_talk, Category, …
• Magic words – {{SITENAME}}, {{NAMESPACE}}, {{#language:}}, …
• Special page aliases – Recentchanges, Version, Statistics, Allpages, …

Groups to be handled by a developer:

• Namespace name aliases – rarely needed.

Regional settings

• Time and date formats
• Number formats
• Edit window toolbar buttons

Language features

For each language, translatewiki.net has a portal page named Portal:und, where und is a language code. It lists some of the formal features of the language, statistics, translators, etc. The portal page can be used for coordination among translators; it may hold, or link to, word lists of translations of specific technical terms, for instance.

• Fallback (that is, other more closely related language(s) to use when a translation is not available, instead of the default fallback, which is English)
• Directionality (left to right or right to left)
• Link trail and Link prefix - these are letters that can be glued after/before the closing/opening brackets of a wiki link, but appear rendered on the screen as if part of the link (that is, clickable and in the same color). By default the link trail is "a-z"; you may want to add the accentuated or non-latin letters used by your language to the list.
• Plural formation
• Grammatical features (inflection, for example)
• Gender distinction
• Capitalisation rules
• Variant conversion (between different orthographies, or scripts)

Other variables

• Bookstore list
• Type of emphasizing

Special data in extensions

• The Cite extension has a special page file per language, cite_text-zxx for language code zxx.