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User:Kaganer/Translator's feedback

< User:Kaganer

My feedback and proposals about translation features

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Started on August 22, 2017, updated in October-November 2017, then in 2018 and in October 2020

Translate Extension

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Special:AggregateGroups

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In the big multilingual sites with many numbers of translatable pages, using 'Special:AggregateGroups' may be caused some problems. See as example meta:Special:AggregateGroups

Main problems/wishes

1. phab:T179798 - Strongly needs automatic table of content (list of aggregate groups) -
UPD 2022-01: obsolete, this is covered by "collapse all" function.
2. phab:T179799 - Needs a list of pages that are in translation, but not part of any group
3. phab:T179800 - Needs support for the hierarchical nesting of aggregated groups (if this is not supported for translatable pages; if supported - how to realize this?); or another way to organize these groups

Backstage issues:

4. phab:T179801 - There is no annotation (a brief description of the purpose of the page - as in another special pages, through "<pagename>-summary" message),
5. phab:T179802 - There is no link to the help (as in another special pages); currently no appropriate help page, but (ideally) should be separate help page for each special page in use;
UPD 2022-01: Link was added, but lead to common help page, not to separate help page for this function.

Related issues:

6. phab:T179803 - from the sidebar of each translatable page, would like to understand which aggregated groups it belongs to. -
  • phab:T179512 - Special:AggregateGroups wishlist (aggregated task)
  • phab:T301311 - It seems that aggregate groups only work for English originals.
    • phab:T301316 - related for nearby case, about Special:MyLanguage

Special:MessageGroupStats

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Used mainly as includable, in the TWN Project portals (for single defined group) - see e.g. translatewiki:Translating:ISA.

Direct using is very hardest, if number of message groups is very large - see e.g. Special:MessageGroupStats in Meta:

  1. Configuring through listbox, where raw list of all groups may be opened too long time
  2. No alphabetical sorting in this list
  3. Aggregate groups, message groups and names of translatable pages is shown in the same list, without any separation
  4. No search, no any filtering
  5. No editbox with search suggestions (may be useful)
  6. No marking source language (this is important after implementation of Special:PageLanguage)

Proposals (Special:MessageGroupStats):

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  1. Replace listbox with a "hierarchical filter", as in Special:Translations
  • phab:T59514 - Special:MessageGroupStats for a list of languages (would be useful for organizing local parts of global actions)
  • phab:T65635 - Add message group description on Special:MessageGroupStats when it has stats
  • phab:T125336 - Allow better searching on Special:MessageGroupStats (issue for CentralNotice banners)

Special:SupportedLanguages

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  1. phab:T177568 - Отображается гораздо меньше языков, чем реально поддерживается (ср. «Всего 77 языков.» с Special:MessageGroupStats/page-Mission - 392 языка)
  • A single representation of a list of languages as a "tag cloud" serves no practical purpose
  1. Displayed language names are not sorted by any obvious parameter (neither by code, nor by name, nor by number of translations)

Proposals (Special:SupportedLanguages):

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I would like to see full-fledged summary statistics by language on this page (that is, a summary for each language as a whole, without breaking down into projects / aggregate groups):

  • the number of translated messages (including obsolete ones),
  • the number of translated message groups (fully and partially),
  • the number of translators per language (total, recently active, today...)
  • activity of translations into the language by years/months/days
  • ...

Or not only by the language as a whole, but by a custom list of aggregate groups.

  • phab:T56279 Statistics for all translations in all languages in a site,
  • phab:T48632 Add statistics variant by word/character count
  • phab:T64196 Allow to filter Special:SupportedLanguages by message group rather than language

Special:LanguageStats

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  1. Нет колонки "проверено" (reviewed) -   Done
  2. There are not enough filters by translators (or it could be an alternative form of the same special page - for example, 'Special:TranslatorStats'; in one case we fix the language, in the other - the translator user)
  3. There is no indication of the language of the source page (this is important due to the appearance of Special:PageLanguage); I would like to have a filter not only by the target language, but also by the source language.
  4. When expanding aggregated groups, their components are displayed at the same level, without indentation
  • phab:T236917 - Optimize Special:LanguageStats
  • phab:T160565 - Special:LanguageStats fails to update statistics in various cases

Special:TranslatorSignup

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Problems:

  1. There is typical problem with the '*-summary' message (as in other special pages), see. phab:T177306 (e.g. compare MediaWiki:Translatorsignup-summary and MediaWiki:Translatorsignup-summary/ru)
  2. No available statistics by subscribers
  3. No link to the help page

Special:NotifyTranslators

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Problems:

  1. No available statistics for notification sent - who sent? How many notifications? When? For which pages? To how many subscribers? Current logging is not enough.
  2. Also, there's no link to a help page.
resolved - phab:T144780 - "Translation Notification Bot sending the same message multiple times to every translator"

Special:Translations

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List of all available translations for single translation unit.

Use case notes:

  1. Conveniently called only contextually, from the main interface
  2. When called independently, by entering text in the "name" field, I would like to see
    1. auto-suggest as in search field
    2. dropdown list of elements that was found by substring
  3. I would like to open the editor directly in the list, without going to the 'Special:Translate' page (although the current mode is also acceptable)

Special:PageTranslation

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Current use cases (Special:PageTranslation)

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Using PageTranslation, Mode 1 - last changes in the translation units and page template
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(New and existing translation units / Translation page template / Priority languages)

  1. An option to switch to compact view mode is needed (only new, deleted and changed items); otherwise, on large pages it is very inconvenient to scroll, and it is easy to miss small changes;
  2. It happens that when marking up the page, I missed some small thing (the new heading "stuck" to the old element, the "tvar" tag hooked on an extra letter, the "tvar" codes were duplicated within one element, etc.). I would like, of course, to be able to perform some manipulations directly in this mode: split or combine elements, add/remove/change tvar
  3. In general, I would like smarter and deeper support for "tvar":
    1. a list of all tvar used on the page
    2. markup highlighting (wiki and html) not located inside tvar (including url)
    3. checking for duplicates inside an element
Using PageTranslation, Mode 2 - translatable pages list
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(Pages in translation)

IMHO, redesign is strongly needs, at least:

  1. The page is very large now, and there is a link to it that is available after each successful mark of any page for translation. When there are more than 3000 pages in the translation, using this page becomes extremely problematic - see for example mw:Special:PageTranslation.
  2. The page is divided into only 4 sections, according to the statuses: "Pages proposed for translation", "Pages in translation" (main), "Damaged pages", "Rejected pages". In this case, in the main section - more than 4 thousand lines, which greatly upsets the user when scrolling.
  3. No navigation, no filters
  4. There is no grouping, at least by aggregated groups or by namespaces.
  5. There is no indication of the language of the source page (this is important due to the appearance of Special:PageLanguage)

Proposals (Special:PageTranslation):

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  1. The page should look similar to Special:LanguageStats, only with filtering not by the target language, but by statuses and by the language of translated pages.
  2. Opposite each line
    • it should be visible who and when performed the last action (edited, marked for translation, stopped translation, removed from translation)
    • the source page language must be specified (this is important due to the appearance of Special:PageLanguage)
  3. Pages removed from translation (i.e., those that were translatable once, but then excluded from the system with tags removed) should also appear in this list.
  4. This page should not be called, as it is now, after every successful translation markup.
  5. Instead, a small page of fixed size should be displayed, like "Special:PageTranslationSummary"
    • with brief statistics: how many translated pages are currently in what status in each of the namespaces;
    • with active parametrizing links to the full version Special:PageTranslation
    • with the possibility of customization by admins for themselves (the ability to choose, for example, aggregated groups, the contents of which will be displayed along with summary statistics)

Special:PagePreparation

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  1. No '*-summary' message, see. phab:T177306
  2. No link to the help page

Special:ImportTranslations

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(unused by me)

Special:ExportTranslations

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Special:PageMigration

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  1. Link to help page without anchor - should be link to the mw:Help:Extension:Translate/Page_translation_administration#Migrating_to_page_translation

Special:PageTranslationDeletePage

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  1. Нет ссылки на справку   Done
  • phab:T71398 - [regression] Editability requirement made deletion of translation pages impossible (Closed, ResolvedPublic)

Special:PageLanguage

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  1. No '*-summary' message, see. phab:T177306
  2. No link to the help page

Special:SearchTranslations

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  1. No '*-summary' message, see. phab:T177306
  2. There is link to the help page with the anchor!   Done
  3. See below Typical tasks, the processing of which causes constant difficulties
    UPD 2022-01: as i mean, tabs "Translations from English" and "No translation from English" should be resolve one problem, but this is unclear and undocumented

Special:Translate

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The main translation tool.

General remarks
  1. No link to help
  2. Heading levels are not checked (if the heading level is different in the translation, the translation should be automatically marked as invalid)
  3. When viewing messages from aggregated groups
    • it is difficult to separate the pages (subgroups) that make them up when these are templates that do not have titles translated; when filtering by search, this division disappears in any case
    • it is impossible to switch to viewing or editing a specific page/subgroup (when, for example, you need to quickly correct the source) - there are simply no direct links to individual pages
  4. There is no system support for documentation (for example, a glossary) and management of similar translations; all this is currently at the level of hacky templates, which are difficult to maintain manually.
"List" mode
  1. little functionality for translating pages (and generally long complex messages)
  2. No adaptation to wide monitors - It is not clear why there are such large gaps between the columns on the right
  3. For long messages, the translation is generally visible only in edit mode
  4. It would be more convenient if the translations were aligned, so that all translations start from the same vertical (with some indentation from the left edge). The current "ladder", when the translation starts where the source text ended, is extremely inconvenient for meaningful work.
"Page" mode
  1. No adaptation to wide monitors - wide margins on the right and left are not used in any way
  2. You can find out that an element has documentation only in edit mode (and I would like to see marks in the right-hand field that would open in the popup-box)
  3. Hyperlinks whose content is completely or partially wrapped in "tvar" cannot be opened (this may be necessary for understanding the text, however, tvar variables are not expanded in the translation interface)
  4. There is a real lack of the ability to see translations into several languages at once (that is, not two columns, but three, for example - the source content, Russian, and Udmurt)
"Review" mode
  1. Headings are not highlighted (as in "Page" mode)
  2. Here, it would be nice to see
    • for translated elements - when the translation was made (last edited)
    • for foreign elements - when and by whom it was made (last edited) translation
  3. No option to remove "reviewed" flag (cancel the "reviewed" status)
  4. There is no way to somehow understand by whom and when the elements were marked as reviewed; it is impossible to undo someone else's check
Translation editing form
  1. Подсказки из памяти переводов: ссылка в сообщениях "83% соответствия / использован 4 раза 〉" не работает, однако она очень нужна - мне нужно знать, что это за "4 раза", потому что, к примеру, я хочу сразу же их тоже поправить. Сейчас приходится это искать в отдельном окне, и не факт, что найдётся, если это перевод из другого проекта.
    2023-03: Now workng.
  2. It is not clear what is the time lag of getting a new translation into "memory"; I would like this lag to be minimal within the session (i.e. if I just made a translation, let it be given to me further among the hints, even if it has not yet entered the main memory array)
  • phab:T114101: [TUX] Improve insertables insertion to replace selected text
  • phab:T111685: Unstable interface bug in the Translate form

Special:TranslationStats

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  1. ...

Categorization of translated pages

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Three approaches to categorizing source pages and their translations:

  1. Meta / Commons / MediaWiki.org
    1. Symmetrical category hierarchies for each language (filled unevenly, because not all translations are available, and not all pages are marked for translation)
    2. Category pages are also marked for translation
    3. Categories with translations are additionally collected in the "/Translations" subcategory within the main category (the category for the main language); there is a symmetrical hierarchy of "../Translations" categories
  2. Outreach
    1. Symmetrical category hierarchies for each language (as in variant 1)
    2. Additionally, all pages and categories are included in the "flat" system of tracking categories by language, using the template {{Text by language}} - "Category:English", "Category:Russian" etc.
  3. Wikidata
    1. Unified system of categories in the original language of the site (English)
    2. All translatable pages using the template {{Translation categories}} are only included in two categories
      1. with a name that matches the name of the main page (or an explicit page, for translatable subpages); these categories, in turn, are included in the main hierarchy of categories
      2. tracking language category, like "Wikidata-en", "Wikidata-ru", etc.
    3. When a page has more than one category, then one of them is selected as the main one, which includes the category with translations, and the page falls into all other categories alone, without translations.

(and also is "chaotic style" in the TranslateWiki.net)

Problems/disadvantages of each categorization option

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  • ...

Typical tasks, the processing of which causes constant difficulties

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This is a list of questions that any translator and translation administrator faces, but for which there are no convenient tools.

Finding translations to review

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On the Special:SearchTranslations page, you can search translations, but the edit form is not built-in, i.e. to edit each translation, you need to follow the link, and then return (in this case, the newly corrected translation will disappear from the results).

Would be nice

  • be able to "inline" edit translations directly on the search results page
  • be able to create (and save) "custom" aggregated groups of messages based on search results (and manually too).

Finding a translation in another language

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It often happens that I need to review translations (perhaps radically different) of the same phrase, written in the source language identically or similarly.

That is, I would like to set a search query in one language, but as a result, I will see not a list of messages in this language, but a list of their translations into a given language (as well as messages not yet translated into this language).

Now you have to open each found message in a separate tab, and then change the language code in the URL and see if it has been translated, and if so, how exactly. This is extremely inconvenient.

To solve such a problem, a mechanism for creating "custom" aggregated groups based on search results or manually would also be convenient.

A "featured messages" mechanism would also be very useful, that is, an easy-to-use ability to include any message in one of its "custom" aggregated groups.

UPD 2022-01:
  1. as i mean, tabs "Translations from English" and "No translation from English" should resolve one problem, but this is unclear and undocumented
  2. and this is not resolve problem task like "search in the translations to Russian (_selected_ language) and show its equivalents in Bashkir/Udmurt/... (another _selected_ language)" (or translations without such equivalent); where _selected_ language is different from source language and user interface language.

Finding and documenting similar translations

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...

Incorrectly flagging items as deprecated

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It happens that when marking page changes for translation, I accidentally marked as obsolete those elements that should not have been marked (the changes did not affect the content). But in order to validate these translations now, I need to go to each element, and press a button there. It is impossible to do this from the list of translations.

Content Translation

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...

Other issues

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List of tasks for tracking

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  • phab:T4085 Add a {{USERLANGUAGE}}/{{USERLANG}} magic word
  • phab:T177306: Unification ways for usage and calling messages that a used as headers for special pages
  • phab:T85059: Merge templates "Localized_media" and "Language_screenshot_URL"
  • phab:T106361: List of translations from <languages> tag is not mobile-friendly
  • phab:T121500 Unify product documentation to make it easier to share, translate and edit
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