A step forward in the internationalization of very common templates
Unclear whether it falls within TWN scope or should be done elsewhere (and how).
Not in twn's scope.
Hi. I would like to propose the creation of new MediaWiki messages for some of the most commonly used templates across the projects. Templates like "done", "not done", "support", "oppose", "neutral" and the like are present in a buch of projects. Speaking as of meta and commons, where I am a frequent contributor; I think it would be good if we had a system message (like MediaWiki:Template-support or the like) where translations could be done, rather to use the LangSwitch and generate large pages when a simple {{int:XXX}} would solve it IMHO. I think it would be of great help not only for meta/commons, but other Foundation projects like strategy, outreach... or any other multilingual wiki outside WMF using this. Please discuss and share your thoughts. Thanks.
Sounds like a good idea, we can use the WikimediaMessages extension which contains i18n of global groups and other WMF-specific messages.
when the templates selected are the ones that are used over and over again on many projects, it may make sense to have them packaged so that they can be used on external Wikis as well. Thanks,
My main concern is not to make them avalaible for external wikis as well which is also good; but to centralize the translation of the template here. Can we start with "Done" & "Not done", for example? Regards.
translatewiki.net is not for translating content. I wouldn't like to have this in translatewiki. I'd like directions for solutions involving the Translate extension to focus on having the functionality in Commons itself.
Having this at translatewiki might serve better than having this at commons. For new/small projects, it can be tough to understand/implement wikisyntax. Being able to translate templates without getting into the wikisyntax would be helpful for such projects. However, starting along this path may make translatewiki more of a GUI editor for templates than internationalization. Since a GUI editor for mediawiki is already under development, this might be a redundant step (even though, as I said, more useful than at commons).
I think you may be missing my point: I stated: Not going to happen.
I ask you to reconsider the idea, at least for Wikimedia as per this reply from SPQRobin and others. It's not only for commons. I think it'd be a useful move. See also bug #35332 for issues regarding your proposal with the translation extension. Regards.
I feel that translation of these templates would be more suitable to happen somewhere inside WMF, maybe meta or commons?
And would it be possible then to use the message everywhere? - We're just asking to create the text (such as "Done") and translate it on as much languages as possible. Regards.
Perhaps a first step is to draw a list of the words to be translated; such a list could be inspired from (a subset of) the Swadesh lists and from various translations on Meta and Commons.
Perhaps also it is a good idea of creating an extension similar to "Wikimedia messages" with very common words (called "CommonWords"?) with frequent words and an extensive qqq explanation to clearly define each word and avoid mistranslations.
Commons has a l10n system for templates based on the autotranslate template (the {{int:Lang}} trick) and al its templates have translations placed in langcode subpages with strings as parameters of a layout template: it's probably the best source for the initial import of templates and translations (as with licenses).
It'd be indeed easier to remove all those "autotranlate" parameters and replace the template with a {{int:Message}}. See an example of why I think this would be useful (the message would appear on the language the user selected on their preferences). Regards.