Wikimedia Commons

Commons:Requests for comment/Translate extension

< Commons:Requests for comment
This page in a nutshell: A proposal to enable the Translate extension on Wikimedia Commons


Background

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 See also: The Translate Extension on MediaWiki.org.
 
The Translate extension.

« The Translate extension makes MediaWiki a powerful tool to translate every kind of text. It's used especially to translate software and to manage multilingual wikis in a sensible way. »

It is currently enabled on (at least) Meta, translatewiki.net and Wikidata as well as several other Wikimedia wikis.

Use on Wikimedia Commons

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Enabling the Translate extension on Wikimedia Commons has previously been discussed on Commons-l mailing-list and on COM:VPP.

“ The Translate extension is super useful to translate content; it's already used for translations on Meta, mediawiki.org and other non-Wikimedia wikis. In my experience, this extension usually increases the amount of translations and multilingual content on a given wiki, which Commons would benefit from. ”

—guillom, 13:36, 21 January 2013 (UTC) source

Questions

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How do we currently handle translations?

There are several concurrent systems.

What’s wrong with any of that?

The Translate extension brings features we do not have at the moment:

  • Syncronisation between translations: if the source page (translatable page) is edited, the translations can automatically be updated at the translation admin choice.
  • A real user interface, developed by a professional software designer observing the users' experience.
  • Easy and immediate way to find what needs doing, wherever the needed translations are.
    • Currently, the translator has to navigate potentially hundreds templates before finding out what needs doing.
  • Translation memory shared with other Wikimedia wikis, built upon previous translations.[1] Other translation aids like translation documentation and assistant languages.
  • …
How do we migrate our current system?

This needs to be worked out, yes, and is the purpose of this RFC :)

  • The help and project pages are fairly straightforward
    • those currently without translations, provided they are stable enough (not too outdated or in current development), can be migrated just by marking them for translation
    • Those with existing translations need some work to copy the old translations, as is happening on Meta.
    • Links must be replaced so they will contain Special:MyLanguage to benefit from this extension? Since the autodetection feature will be disabled for anons, will search engines be able to find/index our content pages in other languages than English? Will the pages using this special link construct add Special:WhatLinksHere -links?
  • Complex templates systems may have to be rethought.
Where can I experiment with this tool to see how it works?
Please see this page. --Ricordisamoa 16:12, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Discussions

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The following discussion is archived. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

RFC closed as successful. Discussion on implementation may continue below. --Pine✉ 20:22, 19 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • I use it regularly and really like it when translating "normal" pages; thus, it has my   Strong support for being implemented here. However, it has still some issues mainly regarding translatable templates, so they should be enabled later. --Ricordisamoa 14:11, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I just tested the (translator side) of it at Meta and found the following issues:
    • No buttons allowing me to insert special characters like the different dashes. I had to copy & paste from Word.
    • It's not as easy as it should to change text of a particular paragraph. First you have to go to the translate tool and then you've to seek the entire page for the wanted paragraph. (not seamingless integrated)
    • The result of your (or any other) translation is not parsed in the tool. I prefer proofreading parsed text over raw wikitext with markup in it (at least as a final step).
    • I've 2 24'' full HD displays, running my browser in full screen mode. I want to see it used but the translate tool only fills 1/2 of the area and the remaining part with white space so I have to scroll.
    • It's supposed to be easy, so I would have expected it would have explained its concept to me on first use but instead I got a page with checkmark and pencil icons.
    Furthermore, I read in bugzilla:42942#c1 that UniversalLanguageSelector would be required. Thus we have to consent about that before we can proceed here? -- Rillke(q?) 14:36, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I also   Support activation at Commons (for content pages like guidelines, policies, help pages [but not the main page]) because it helps getting an overview about the translation status of content pages. -- Rillke(q?) 11:16, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support lets start with only some namespaces --Jarekt (talk) 12:09, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support: I just found out that someone was so annoyed by the need for Translate as to send a Wikimania submission. ;) --Nemo 09:16, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support Valuable tool to support better multilingualization, especially of Commons policy pages and Help pages. It is a significant problem for policy pages and help pages to get updated in English only and their translations often left outdated. Although marking those pages up for the Translate extension will require some efforts, I think it's a cost worth investing. --whym (talk) 12:35, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Info I have publicized this RFC at MediaWiki:Watchlist-summary (included in the watchlist). --whym (talk) 12:35, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks! Jean-Fred (talk) 12:46, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support I've often noticed that non-English copies of policy pages such as COM:OTRS, COM:FOP and COM:TOO either are incomplete or out of date. This extension should hopefully help us keeping the translations up-to-date. With the present system, it is better to avoid translating policy pages as they will soon become outdated and give a false impression of being correct. --Stefan4 (talk) 15:57, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support Only seems sensible to use this on such a multilingual project (NB I have not used this extension before and I support this based on Rillke's evaluation of the technical aspects above). Certainly seems like it would help with documentation in Help: and Commons: namespaces (overhauling the documentation is something that very much needs doing, and it would be a good idea to have this in place first) –⁠moogsi (talk) 17:30, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Question Will this be extensible to allow translated category names? Would be even more awesome if yes. darkweasel94 07:12, 13 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support works fine at Wikidata NNW 11:39, 13 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support I hope that all the i18n hacks here can go with fire Raymond 19:26, 13 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support A bit annoying to use, but better than the status quo. --Rschen7754 20:20, 13 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support. It will be useful for translating the tentatively planned on-wiki version of the forthcoming welcome to Commons brochure.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 20:56, 13 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support I have been using Bing Translate to us on to help edit pictures ---All things are possible to him who believes (talk) 00:11, 14 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • not sure. Translate extension has ULS dependency and so I think, RFC about enabling ULS (or dependency of translated extension) need to be solved before enabling this extension here.--Praveen:talk 02:47, 14 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support - this is useful, and I've been using it with success on TranslateWiki. Even tho' it does mangle the Irish language betimes - Alison ❤ 06:49, 14 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support we need this. —Mono 19:07, 14 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support It's worth a shot, currently I depend on google translation and Leo.org to translate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hedwig in Washington (talk • contribs)
    • When I was trying this Extension at Meta and MediaWiki wiki, I also had to use external translation helpers. It did not automatically translate anything. Only at translatewiki, there were suggestions by e.g. Microsoft translator and there is something called translation cache which also makes suggestions but they weren't really useful (guess the cache has to grow before). -- Rillke(q?) 08:45, 15 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support Definitely! --SJ 00:11, 17 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support Commons is considered as multilingual project, but the reality is different. It is hard to use (and understand the rules of Commons) without knowledge of English and for some users lack of real multilinguality is real reason why they do not use Commons. Multiple translating systems are used on Commons, but none of them works perfectly. Using different systems is very confusing, my experience is for example, that Commons:Picture of the Year was using even different systems among different years. Translate extension is not perfect system, but certainly usable systems with useful features (like translation memory). But I am afraid it cannot solve all multilinguality problems on Commons, as the largest I consider category names and unnecessary length of many rules and help pages, that causes them hard to translate). --Jklamo (talk) 09:28, 18 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support --Daniel749 talk 12:16, 18 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support per Rillke--Steinsplitter (talk) 16:29, 18 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.


Technical implementation

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So, how do we enable it?

--Ricordisamoa 22:46, 18 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I just filled a Bugzilla bug 48620, will commit a patch in a few minutes' time. odder (talk) 20:33, 19 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. Do I miss something or will administrators have indeed to ask a 'crat and depend on his/her goodwill to be able to manage translations or mark pages for translation when the suggested patch goes live? -- Rillke(q?) 17:38, 20 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes and no—for now, only bureaucrats are able to add users (not necessarily administrators) to the 'translationadmin' group, but once people are added to that group, they can mark pages for translations all by themselves. And, by the way, the patch is live now. odder (talk) 20:05, 20 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think administrators should be trusted enough to hold this right by default. But this is just my humble opinion. And we should add some guidance (e.g. how existing translations should be treated) ASAP. -- Rillke(q?) 20:46, 20 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've been told that the regular way is to let bureucrats add users to the 'translationadmin' group (it's not a user right that people can hold–it's a user group), at least at the beginning. If you think that administrators should be able to add and remove themselves from that group, I believe we can discuss it (along with some other options, for instance enabling TranslationNotifications). odder (talk) 20:51, 20 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
One user group can't be assigned to another one but translateadmin user group consists of 2 user rights (translate-manage and pagetranslation) which, in theory, can be assigned to the sysop-group, I think. -- Rillke(q?) 20:59, 20 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I understand, the whole point of this group is to let non-admin users manage translations, so adding this right to sysops wouldn't actually fix the situation. When (if) admins get the ability to add themselves to that group, this part of the problem will be solved. (Though we can, of course, add this right to the sysop group, and have the 'translationadmin' group on its own, and even give the ability to add users this group to admins instead of bureucrats). All of this needs to be discussed first, though. odder (talk) 21:20, 20 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I know, user rights can be added to multiple groups. For example the abusefilter-log-detail is assigned to multiple groups at Special:UserGroupRights. (Actually I wonder why this particular right is assigned to autoconfirmed users while we requested it for patrollers only) -- Rillke(q?) 21:31, 20 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed, I'm not saying you can't assign these user rights to multiple groups, only that this will need to be discussed first. odder (talk) 21:37, 20 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. I warmly suggest not to add these rights to the sysop group, because 1) users and translators would have no clue who to ask for translation assistance among the 273 admins, 2) it would make sysops feel they can just use the tool as they wish, while they have to at least read page translation docs and follow some consensus.
Once things are stabilised and it's clear how Commons wants to use the extension, you can let sysops grant/remove the flag to themselves, but in the meanwhile it would be more productive to discuss what to actually do. --Nemo 06:48, 22 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
So we activated an overly complicated extension? The quotes above didn't sound that complex.
Perhaps people who want to participate in i18n could watch and ask at COM:TN? Also, if it would be true what you say, people would not know whom to ask about AbuseFilter matters. But having a glad look at the special page in concern or the log, and you usually know whom to ask. Having people in a user group does not grant for sure that they are active.
I agree that we should document the procedure somewhere; I suggest that pages are proofread and copyedited before they are marked for translation. (We could use a template or a category or both for that.) Often content is outdated or can be improved. I suggest to continue discussion about this at COM:TN. -- Rillke(q?) 08:36, 22 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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