Translatability
This is a short guide to creating pages that would be easier to translate. This is aimed at everyone who creates pages or processes on multilingual wikis, e.g. Meta, Wikidata, mediawiki.org, Commons, etc.
Translation tags
- Keep as much markup as possible outside the translation tags. If it's going to be the same in all languages, there is no need to translate it. Markup that should not be translated includes complex HTML tags, table markup, templates that are the same everywhere, and filenames of images that are used identically in all languages, and lists (
*and#). Simple and short markup within the sentence, such as bold or italic text, should be inside translation tags. - Keep punctuation inside the translation tags. Punctuation mark usage varies across languages, and localized versions need to be used.
- Don't put too much text within one translation unit. Create more translation units instead.
Style
Process
When you set up a discussion for many languages, please think about the following questions.
- Are all instructions translatable?
- When you tell people they can participate in any language, in which language do you say this?
- How will discussions work? There's probably no good solution for this, but you need to consider it.
- How do you handle translation of transcluded pages?
Links
- Help:Extension:Translate
- Tech/News/Manual#Guidelines – more technical things to think about
- Writing clearly