Template:Languages

The link "Other languages" list them all, it's jsut one link further away. This template is there since many years. The translated page UI and the inclusion of the list of translated languages has been made many years after. If you want to have more languages listed (in the side bar), you need to mark the page for translation (for now there's no other way), and ONLY then we can remove the template from the top of the page. But preparing a page for translation requires to retranslate them, or reimport existing translations from their page history (if they were accurate and in sync) and this takes some editing time.

Note that we are talking about pages that have been created and translated many years ago, before the site evolved to get some more capacity (the translationj UI was already there, but for years they were not listing other languages in the side bar, which was initially designed for Interwiki links on wikis with multiple linguistic editions, such as Wikipedia or Wiktionary, and not for linking translations available on the local multilingual site, like this wiki, or Wikimedia Commons, or MetaWiki); there's a problem however for intergrting this sidebar on wikis that need both lists (local translations and interwiki links, such as Wikisource: they need two separate lists)

Note also that some pages (e.g. Language Portals, or Glossaries) exist in different languages but are not translations of the same base content. So we cannot use the Language sidebar which woiuld list only translated pages, when their contents are actually different and not meant to be translations but language-specific. We still need a way to link these pages together (where some parts only may be actually translated, possibly by transcluding a translatable template, such as in existing portals hose most important parts are translatable).

However language portals are not linked this way: there are indexed by categories and by statistic pages. Some language portals may contain a specific "See also" section for linking to portals for a few related languages: we don't need a language bar for them, the list of links is edited separately on each portal. These seem arbitrary choices, but they minimize the maintenance cost and also make these lists more relevant: a long list of languages (especially when it is not sorted and does not show enough info than a single language name is not so easy to navigate). But listing some relevant languages allows people to find relevant pages, even if they are still not translated and the support for each language can progress incrementally without loosing focus over time.

Even if a list of languages is not "complete", it still makes people aware that the current content is not just for a single language and that there are interesting other languages to look at (including for looking at differences: this is important for developers to see how their code will adapt to a varity of languages or scripts and to develop a mor international community instead of focusing just some users in some country). Translations will never be terminated (not even in English, which is also not the best source of information for all topics, as such source may often be severely biased by a limtied view and lack of consideration for native speakers!). That's why IMHO the "language portals" are important on this wiki: you'll find informations that you would not find easily everywhere else, because they are a central hub from hiwhc other relevant links can be referenced for various projects.

Verdy p (talk)10:53, 4 June 2022