User:Sahadeva/translation notes

• see also: Page translation administration

Tagging

• Anyone can mark the translatable parts by wrapping them inside <translate>...</translate> tags;
• Add <languages /> to produce a list of all translations of the page;
• The translatable page will be listed on Special:PageTranslation as ready for marking.

Tag placing

• If possible, try to put the tags on their own lines, with no empty lines between the content and the tags.
• If not possible, do like this for example:

{{Template|<translate>Some localised parameter</translate>}}

Marking

• After the tagging, a translation administrator marks the page for translation
• The system will update the translatable page source by adding unit markes (<!--T:#-->) for each translation unit.

Unit markers

• Never add unit markers yourself.
• Markers are always on the line before the unit; or, if it starts with a header, after the first header on the same line.

Example:

 <translate>
 == Birds == <!--T:1-->
 Birds are animals which....
 
 <!--T:2-->
 Birds can fly and...
 </translate>

Deleting whole Units

• If you delete whole units, also remove the unit marker.

Moving units

• You can move units around without invalidating translations: just move the unit marker together with the rest of the unit.

Advanced

Variables

• Syntax is <tvar|name>contents</>. For translators these will show up only as $name, and in translation pages will automatically be replaced by the value defined in the translatable page (so they are global "constants" across all its translation pages). Variables can be used to hide untranslatable content in the middle of a translation unit. It also works for things like numbers that need to be updated often. You can update the number in all translations by changing the number in the translatable page source and re-marking the page. You do not need to invalidate translations, because the number is not part of the translation unit pages. Example:

 <translate>
 Income this month <code><tvar|income>{{FORMATNUM:3567800}}</></code> EUR
 </translate>

• May be interesting: Universal Language Selector

Also need to understand

• Categories
• Messaging

notes:

• Make all editors translators

Translating

How to

1. Go to Special:Translate
2. Click the name of any message group that has untranslated messages. (Each translatable page is a message group, but there can be other kinds of message groups too.)
3. Choose a language other than the language of the source text (which usually is English or en).