Translating:Why use translatewiki.net

What are the advantages and what are the disadvantages of using translatewiki.net to translate the interface?

[edit] Advantages

• Use your translations on every MediaWiki wiki, this includes every Wikimedia wiki.

  Translations on a local wiki can only be used locally. Translations here (as explained in the "disadvantage" section) will go to the software, and can finally be used on every MediaWiki wiki.

• The best wiki-based translation software available. There is an easy system (using Special:Translate, and Special:Magic), and there are people around who can help you. Many messages have translation hints that help you understand the meaning and use of the message.
• No sysop privileges required, everyone can contribute. Adminship is usually granted to only a few users, if not nobody. Here, everyone who can contribute in a language, can help on the localisation of that language.

  It is in the software that you need "editinterface" right to edit pages in the MediaWiki namespace. By default this is granted to users in the group "sysop". Translatewiki.net is specially made to edit the MediaWiki namespace, so it has set the "editinterface" to a custom group "translator", so it can be granted to every user wants to translate.

• Localise namespaces (Help, User, Talk, ...), special page names (Recentchanges, Allpages, ...), and magic words.

  The message groups above cannot be localised in a normal wiki, because they are burried deep down in the software. Here you can localise these message groups, and later on your changes can be used in every installation of MediaWiki again.

• You are able to translate new messages faster than on a local wiki.

  uses always the latest version of the software. This means new messages show up much faster than on any other wiki. Though, this can also mean translatewiki.net uses an unstable version, but problems are usually solved quickly.

• Keep track of changed messages

  Whenever a message in the English localisation changes, the messages present in other languages are tagged with !!FUZZY!! for easy identification. You do not have to go looking for those changes yourself.

[edit] Disadvantages

• Your translations will not show up immediately on your local wiki, but after a few days to weeks, or if you are using a release version, after the next update.

  Explanation: First the translations need to be committed to the MediaWiki software (= "Subversion" or "SVN"). This usually takes less than one day. After that, Wikimedia needs to update the software version. The time this takes differs largely; sometimes it takes some days, sometimes weeks, and if there are major updates needed, a few months, but that happens rarely.
  For wikis outside Wikimedia it takes longer: for some wikis using an unreleased version (like Wikimedia) it takes the same time as Wikimedia, but for most non-Wikimedia wikis using released versions it takes months.