Fundraising 2011/Styleguide/Translation

Translator Contacts

In an effort to build a contact database of potential translators for the 2011 fundraiser (as well as anything that needs to be translated) I developed a little webapp that looks at the revision history for pages that have been previously translated. Instead of having to manually review the revision history for each language version of a page, the application requests the history for each language version of a page (it assumes "page name/language code" naming convention). The application keeps track of the last reviewed revision for each language version of a page and only show new revisions which allows for quick identification of new translators. To make their identification even easier, the application grey's out anonymous editors and translators already in the contact database.

I'm not going to write a user manual on the use of the application, yet, since it is likely that the workflow will completely change as it matures over the next few weeks.

Translation workflow for PCs

(The translation process for translators is laid out in Fundraising 2011/Translation/Process, so that is omitted here.)

Adding new or changing translation requests

When a new appeal or another page with is to be set up for translation, follow these steps:
1. Add the page to the main template for this translation drive: Template:Translate-status/Fundraising 2011 (diff)
2. Add that page to the preloaded template: Template:Translate-status/Fundraising 2011/Preload (diff)
3. Announce the change in Fundraising 2011/Translation/Updates.
  - Logo for added translation: [[File:List-add.svg|15px|link=]]
  - Logo for changed translation: [[File:List-remove.svg|15px|link=]]
  - Logo for info announcements: [[File:Tango-style info icon.svg|15px|link=]]
4. Announce the change to the mailing list fr-translations (fr-translations@lists.wikimedia.org). (Subject to change soon, hopefully.)
If new core messages are added or core messages are changed, follow these steps:
1. Do not change or request anything until the core messages are set in stone! Any change to core messages lead to massive ripple effects for translators, and updates can take a long time to fix.
2. If there are several core messages to add, instead of changing the "Core messages" page, create a new translation requests (follow the steps above) with the new core messages in a separate page (named "Core messages 2" or similar). This is because (a) it is easier to do for PCs and (b) easier to complete for translators than changing an existing translated page.
  - This also goes if a message from the current core messages is changed. If the change is substantial (so that it will have to be retranslated completely), add it as a new message instead. If the change is small (like adding a link), also add it to a new page, but add in  that it is similar to message # something in the previous translation.
3. If a change is needed in an appeal page or similar (not to core messages):
  1. Make the change in the English original.
  2. Announce the change on Fundraising 2011/Translation/Updates and to fr-translations (be sure to include a diff link both places!)
  3. Go through all the language templates and change the ones with status proofreading/ready/published to needs updating (this is the cumbersome part on our end, and is another reason we just don't want pages to change once their translation has started)

Transferring translations to Foundation wiki

Translations that are categorised as "1" (ready) in the subcategories of Category:Translation/Fundraising 2011 are ready to be moved to the Foundation wiki.
- Appeals and FAQ pages can simply be copy-pasted directly to the corresponding template.
- Core messages must be placed in their individual message template (see the list below).

List of core message translation templates

Complete list of core message templates

Core message are an integral part of the fundraiser. These form the back bone of all landing pages and banners accross 150+ languages. Banner core messages are stored within the mediawiki namespace and are not discussed here. Landing page core messages can be broken down into "form" and "appeal", the former consisting of more of the LP core messages. These are localised by language and country using an appended suffix consisting of lowercase language code follow by upper case country code.

Selecting the translations is done by Template:FRLocalize. This automatically selects the best localized subpage of the passed template, based on the title of the page it is being used on.

e.g. {{FRLocalize|2011FR/appeal-title}} when used on User:Pcoombe/fr/CA
- Will display Template:2011FR/appeal-title/fr/CA if it exists, else
- Will display Template:2011FR/appeal-title/fr if it exists, else
- Falls back to Template:2011FR/appeal-title/en (which should always exist)

FRLocalize is used for all the core landing page messages. Translations for them are stored under Template:2011FR/ - you can get a list at wmf:Special:PrefixIndex/Template:2011FR. It can also be used for the appeals e.g. {{FRLocalize|2010/JimmyLetterK}}.

The following templates are translations of the core messages. The "en" version is listed for convenience but changing "en" to a different language code will get the other languages.

Identifying Translators

When a new edit is made, you can click on the "diff" link to see the diff for the edit. If the diff show the editor actually doing translation work or proof-reading the translation, they are someone that we would like to add to the database. As part of the entry in the database we are tracking the user's babel (if they have one) or, at a minimum, the languages used for the identified translation activity. Often, users do not have a user page on Meta and thus we must identify their home wiki (using the toolserver contributions tool) to find their main userpage and, hopefully, babel).

Application Status

The application, sadly, currently only runs on my laptop. I am hoping to be able to upload it to the toolserver, but I am waiting on an account there. The application is a bit rough around the edges, but I plan on making it a bit more feature complete as we determine how it will fit into the workflow.

In addition, the person using it must also have access to the SugarCRM instance being used by WMF to track contacts for the 2011 fundraiser in order to add new translators.