Mistake

Hi,
It was probably a bad idea to create the page Support/fr (just wanted to translate the messages on the page, but actually I created a totally different page, that will probably not be watched by any body...). Were there a better way to do that? Should someone suppress the page? Cheers

Linterweb10:15, 4 June 2011

Discussions about French translations are conducted in French on the portal talk page. It is recommended to ask questions on Support in English, so that the pool of people who can answer a question is as big as possible. So you are right that having sub-pages in different languages for Support is going to confuse our current system.

But, people whose English is not good enough to ask a question in English do occasionally ask questions on Support. In future, we can expect the number of people translating on translatewiki.net without knowing English to increase. These translators will be translating from a fallback language such as Russian, Arabic, Mandarin, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and this is the reason why localising translatewiki.net into these languages is very useful. So, it would be good to come up with a plan on how to assist these users in getting support.

Would it work to put a system in place where people without English ask questions on the portal talk page of their fallback language (or any other language they know). Translators of fallback languages would assist by answering general support questions or translating any questions they can't answer and posting them on the main Support page. They would also need to be willing to translate the answer back into the fallback language. If nobody did anything with a question for a few days, then the person asking the question could always try leaving a question on the main Support page and see whether anybody is willing to guess at the meaning (perhaps via google translate if you wanted to have a really wild guess!). We could then include a link at the top of the main Support page labelled "multilingual support" or "need to ask a question in another language" or something, linking to an explanation of the system. The downside is that this system is slower than asking in English. Or is it best to have Support subpages in different languages?

Lloffiwr13:10, 4 June 2011

For the time being, I would rather suggest people asking questions in languages other than English on Support, and those who can to either translate them to English, or answer them and provide (at least) a short english summary.

Purodha Blissenbach16:55, 9 June 2011

Draft of a note on multilingual support.

Page title: Support in other languages

"The best language for asking a question on Support is English. Your chances of getting an answer quickly are highest with English. But if your English is not good, you can try asking in another language that you know well. Then, if there are translators around in that language, one of them may reply directly to you or, if he/she does not know the answer, they may translate the query to English and the answer back again. The more translators there are for a language, the higher your chances of getting help."

I expect we would find out soon enough whether this works. I guess that all translators follow the talk page of their own language portal. But how many follow the Support page?

Lloffiwr19:08, 9 June 2011
 
 

I deleted the page.

Siebrand22:31, 4 June 2011

I like the remark of Lloffiwr. As for me, my translation of the Support page was also a question of consistency. I don't like too much pages in French linking to pages not in French. But I realize I did not proceed correctly, thanks for having deleted the page, it's better this way.

Linterweb19:25, 6 June 2011