Help talk:Translating

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Fix link to the Translation MediaWiki extension

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This discussion is done.

Maybe more proper link is https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:Translate ?

I think so, too. (The link should be changed according to the previous suggestion.) At least there lies the documentation of the extension.
-- SebastianSchmid (talk) 15:59, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, changed. --Grknight (talk) 21:13, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

How to translate templates?

Talk status
This discussion is done as of July 30, 2021.

How should templates like Template:Note, Template:Important and Template:Warning be translated? Should they be translated like "normal" articles with <languages />, <translate> and <\translate> tags? Or is this a bad idea?

I haven't found a template which is translated like this yet. (Therefore there is no "language selection bar" and no "Translate this page" link at the top of the template page.) Is there a reason why?

-- SebastianSchmid (talk) 17:38, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Sorry it's been a long time since anyone has responded to you. To answer the question, no, templates themselves should NOT be translated. Templates for every language would make everything much, much more complicated. The text strings inside the templates can be translated however. The translation software should make this somewhat simple for you. Kind regards, --Maffblaster (talk) 22:07, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

How to mark changes for translation?

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This discussion is done.

When a page already marked for translation is changed, then on top of the page the following message appears: This page contains changes which are not marked for translation.
Which is the way to go to also mark the changes for translation? --Charles17 (talk) 13:24, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

The changes come in a sort-of backlog that needs to be approved. This approval is done by a limited set of editors that check and verify if the changes are of good quality and so on. I'm mainly doing these approvals. Note however that some articles are marked for translation but do not have any approved set yet (those that have no other languages except English in the language tab on top). This could be for various reasons, for instance because the article is still being edited a lot (I tend to only mark articles for translation when the edit history is stable), or does not adhere to the guidelines of the wiki. --SwifT (talk) 13:28, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

What's the right way to caption a translated site?

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This discussion is still ongoing.

There are some different naming schemes in use at the moment.

Example:

The origin page is Handbook:X86/Blocks/Disks (the same caption "Handbook:X86/Blocks/Disks" is used at this site).

The translated versions are as follows:

Based on this, there are some main naming strategies:

  1. No change at all (e.g. ru: "Handbook:X86/Blocks/Disks")
  2. Only the language code is appended (e.g. ko: "Handbook:X86/Blocks/Disks/ko")
  3. Translated caption (e.g. de: "Handbuch:X86/Blöcke/Festplatten", it's similar at es or ja)
  4. Completely free translated caption (e.g.: "Gentoo Linux AMD64 Handbuch" instead of "Handbook:AMD64" at Handbook:AMD64/de)

What's the right naming scheme that should be used?

-- SebastianSchmid (talk) 14:33, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

I, the Korean translator, thought that the caption has meaning of documentation path(idea has delivered from each *original pages' naming scheme), and there is currently no rule to replace a caption being on each page. so I can't say what naming scheme is better. I'll follow the rule if someone suggests a better idea and many persons agreed for that.
-- Darkcircle (talk) 15:12, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
Yes, it seems that there is no real strict rule for this at the moment. I looked a bit around in other wikis and e.g. the naming scheme at the MediaWiki help sites are similar to the naming mix mentioned above. So maybe it doesn't matter.(?)
-- SebastianSchmid (talk) 22:02, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

About Chinese Localization

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This discussion is still ongoing.

Chinese is a macro language that includes mainly two writing system: Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. In this page, there is a special note that says Simplified Chinese don't have a usable ISO 639-1 Code, so use zh-cn instead.

Will it be better to use zh to cover both Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese? Or would it be possible if we could also have zh-tw for Traditional Chinese translation of this wiki?

StephDC (talk) 15:51, 19 January 2015 (UTC)


Chinese Localization Today

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This discussion is still ongoing.

Following up on #About Chinese Localization, the Gentoo Wiki now has several Chinese variants.

America:

  • zh
  • zh-hans
  • zh-hant

Asia:

  • zh
  • zh-cn
  • zh-tw
  • zh-sg
  • zh-mo
  • zh-hans
  • zh-hant
  • zh-hk
  • zh-my

Pacific:

  • zh
  • zh-hans
  • zh-hant


Most new Chinese translations now use zh-cn and zh-tw, while some older pages are still in zh.

The language list also shows several very similar Chinese variants, sometimes more than once. This makes the list confusing and harder to manage.

Because the language list is separated by continent, America appears before Asia. Some gentoo-zh translators used zh-hans or zh-hant from the America section, while older translations are under zh-cn or zh-tw in Asia.

This also makes the URLs inconsistent. Simplified Chinese pages should not be split between zh-cn and zh-hans.

We are now moving these translations back to zh-cn and zh-tw, and I hope we can avoid this happening again.

MediaWiki, Meta-Wiki, and ArchWiki do not separate languages by continent. ArchWiki also mainly uses Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.

The main difference is between zh-cn and zh-tw. They are basically the regional versions of Simplified and Traditional Chinese, similar to zh-hans and zh-hant.

Simplified and Traditional Chinese are different in the character forms, not just wording. Most other variants still fall under either Simplified or Traditional Chinese, with only some wording differences.

For example, zh-hk is still Traditional Chinese, but with some Hong Kong wording instead of Taiwan wording.

I think it would be better to mainly use zh-cn and zh-tw, and consider disabling some less-used variants such as zh-hans, zh-hant, and possibly zh.

We also do not have enough Chinese translators to maintain so many variants.

I am also trying to get more people to help with Gentoo Wiki translation here: https://gentoozh.org/posts/2026-06-30-gentoo-wiki-translation/

Zakkau (talk) 11:45, 24 August 2026 (UTC)