Help:Translating Wiki Content
From Textpattern CMS User Documentation
This wiki offers to provide Textpattern documentation in nearly any language needed. This can only be achieved with your help in translating the English content. If you are willing to lend some translation time, this help article will get you going.
See help:New Accounts if you need a wiki account. After that you might review help:Languages and Translation Representatives to see what efforts are already in progress. You can join translation efforts in progress or request to have a new language implemented.
This page describes the wiki translation basics in context of the help:Contents, because the wiki help information (including all the pages like this one about translation) is the first content you should translate. The help content provides insight about wiki editing and collaboration, thus it's logical that you translate that content first!
Contents |
Know This!
Before you begin, make sure you understand these important points about translation efforts in this wiki:
- English is the default wiki language. All corrections, clarifications, refinements, updates, and new content are made in the English pages first. If you are not translating English pages, you are likely not translating the latest and most accurate information.
- All translated pages must have a mirror link back to the English page that was translated. Without this mirror link, fellow wiki users will never be able to keep track of what has been translated or not.
- Make sure to "Watch" (see the link under the title/login bar) every English page you translate. This will ensure you get an email from the system every time the English page is edited/updated. By this notification of watching the English page, you will then know when you need to also update your translated content.
Translating an Existing English Page
Since we suggest you start with the help contents, we'll use a page from that section in these instructions. In fact, we'll use this page you are reading. In the right column of any wiki page, you'll see a header called "Translations (?)" (the question mark links to this page). If the page has been translated to any languages correctly, the language will appear underneath the column header.
Adding the language link is the first step to translating a page. Here is how it's done:
- Click the edit button at the top of the English page to get into page edit view.
- At the very bottom of the page content, add the following comment code if it doesn't already exist...
<!-- Keep at bottom! -->
- Add the link tag for your translation page under the comment, as described next.
[[...]]). Replace ... with a translation of the English title plus the two-character language prefix for your language. The two-character code is critical to generate the visibility of the mirror link. Adjust the title as needed to ensure there are no conflicts with other wiki page titles. For example, a mirror link for the French version of the English Index is... [[fr:Index Français]]See help:Content Language Options for the two-letter codes of all supported languages.
Of course you have to save your changes. If done correctly, you'll see your language added to the right column of the English page.
If your link does not appear, it likely means the language your working with has not been initiated by administrators yet and you need to get their assistance to do so.
Creating the Mirror Link with English Page
Now you will add the link back to the English page in context of your new localised page.
- Click the language link you created above (new links appear in red text).
- Add the language link code to the page (representing the bottom of the page), but this time using the English page title prefixed with the two-character code for English (en:). For example
[[en:help:Translating Wiki Content]]
Attention: English page titles must be EXACTLY the same as the original English page title or you will create a link to an entirely different (and empty) page (and the mirror will be incorrect).
Click back and forth between the English page and your localised page to ensure the links are going to the right place. If all is okay, you then begin translating the page content.
Note: You may notice there are two namespace prefixes used in the example above for this page, notably "en:help:". That's because the help pages are in their own wiki namespace ("help:") and thus the namespace has to be declared or the wrong page will be linked to. For more about namespaces, see help:Namespaces.
Wiki Main Page
DO NOT TRANSLATE THE WIKI MAIN PAGE UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.
We will be redesign the main page and thus the current lists layout will not be the same. Follow this thread in the forum for updates on this initiative.
Special notes about wiki categories, templates, and other pages in namespaces
We use help:Categories and help:Templates in the wiki to help organize and reuse content in optimal ways. These kinds of pages can--and should--also be translated and used exactly how the English versions use them. Just like with any content page, these pages should be "Watched" to know when they are changed or removed.
These kinds of pages are in their own help:Namespaces, like mentioned earlier. Make sure you include the namespace when creating mirror links.
Let's consider another example to be clear. Suppose your translating the main category page of the category:Tag Reference in French. You would translate the title (Référence des tags), keep it in the "Category" namespace (category:Référence des tags), and add the language prefix (fr:category:Référence des tags). Of course it has to be a wiki link, so you add the link brackets for the final working tag: [[fr:category:Référence des tags]]. This creates a category page named category:Référence des tags.
Happy translating!
