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Technologies

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  • Unified Login
Unified login is a mechanism which allows users to use a single login across the majority of the Wikimedia Foundation's projects. This allows users to maintain a consistent identity throughout Wikimedia, following a single sign-up. Other advantages of this mechanism include the removal of the threat that impersonation poses and the ability to visit many projects without having to go through the labors of logging in everywhere. Users can create a unified login by visiting Special:MergeAccount on a project where they already have an account, and following the prompts.
TradWiki/WikiTran (WikipediaTranslator/WikiTranslator/BabelWiki) is a wiki that will be coded to help wikipedians translate articles from English to other languages.

Disscussion

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Bilingual templates

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I have a problem with the bilingual templates ... that is: I don't like them since they get to big and will create a huge mess when we want to use the same templates for all projects (uploading them with the bot). It would mean that basically we would have 200 x 200 = ca. 40000 templates - considering all wikipedia languages + using two languages on the template simply creates double work with the localization of it. The template needs to be created in such a way that we get one template that is valid for all wikipedias - so that on the local wikipedias they only need to localize some subtemplates to get things correctly. Instead of creating double work we should think about how to minimize work and maximize results. Now I know that the objection will be: but we do not translate among all that languages - and there I say: at this moment we do not ... but only having 50 languages to consider we have 50 x 50 = 2500 templates ... I am trying to find a way where wikipedias will need to do things only once and where we will be able to use the translated language names in database format like we have them on WiktionaryZ. Thank you for taking the time. (Posting the same to Babel) --Sabine 13:22, 19 September 2006 (UTC)Reply

I would like to add, if we have bilingual templates, then it means not only that 1) we coordinators cannot understand exactly they means but also that 2) we and many other editors cannot prepare them by ourselves. In this reason I conclude English version is preferable on meta in the view of Transcom members. I cannot force any editor to use English version, but I hereby strongly request you to use the original version. --Aphaia 08:28, 21 September 2006 (UTC)Reply
We don't need 200² templates to create bilingual translators templates for 200 languages. Only one and a few multilingual message templates (I translate from // a-language // to // b-language) in as much languages as needed. And that's all. True multilingualism is not so terrific. Arno Lagrange  12:11, 21 September 2006 (UTC)Reply

I don't like your proposal, because:

  • variables are meaningless for me. I don't know which language it is and also its meaning.
  • description is meaningless for me. I don't know in which language it is written.

Arno, I am fed up with your condecence, esperant-centricism and template-fetisism. You haven't hear anyone's complaints and ignored the past discussions. What you promote is not multilingualism but the contrary. You scared other translators and now us, coordinators. I am more than happy if you don't disturb us.

Arno, I once decided to leave this project for your sake. Because I was fed up with your bossy attitude. I state hereby if you don't stop to disturb us, ignore us and contintue your rant, I will ask the Board to ban you from meta editing. --Aphaia 04:44, 26 September 2006 (UTC)Reply
I don't understand why you are now ranting at Arno. He made a serious proposal in order to solve the problem mentioned by Sabine. And what was esperanto-centrist about this proposal? (I know he has been esperanto-centrist on other occasions, but I don't see it here). Anyway, why are you so English-centrist? Marcos 22:20, 10 October 2006 (UTC)Reply

Better a trilingual approach

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So as to express what a translator can do, at most 3 languages are needed:

  1. The language of the wiki (so it's users understand)
  2. The source language (so people needing their message translated can find a translator)
  3. The target language (so people demanding to read someone else's text can find a translator)

That is more applicable to the way to find to the place where templates are being used, e.g. category pages, etc. than the templates themselves, but I think, they should not be worse. Technically that could be handled with a set of x+N*y templates (not x+N*N) if the size of data processed by templates were not limited, as a safeguard, in MediaWiki. Maybe the limit allows 250 languages before being hit, I do not know. It depends on template size. --Purodha Blissenbach 14:42, 26 September 2006 (UTC)Reply

I have a different idea. Your mentioning 2nd and 3rd points can be showed with Babel template(s) already in my opinion. I think it makes a sense the categories for this template system have all those languages description, but I don't think it needs all three languages are put on the templates itself, specially the templates contains language codes. And meta is surely a multilingual website though, the working language of Wikimedia Foundation and also of Communications committee is only "English", so there is no harm of English description containing templates. Source language description wouldn't help to seek translators, I guess, since I have experienced frequently to be called for Chinese translation when people misunderstood the text as written in Japanese. And on my side, I cannot distinguish languages written with cylic alphabet, etc. My conclusion: to define the source language, text in that language wouldn't work, and the simpler system with language code will be more assured and efficient. --Aphaia 04:33, 27 September 2006 (UTC)Reply
Although you're trying to explain the opposite, your example of people misunderstanding Chinese for Japanese exactly describes the neccessity of a trilingual approach in the most general case. After all, it's hardly more labour to implement than a bilingual one. --Purodha Blissenbach 19:44, 16 December 2006 (UTC)Reply

Categories of Multilingualism

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Multilingualism Artificial languages *Artificial languages equal rights
*Capital and small letters for interwiki *Case of language links *Communications subcommittees/Trans/core langs
*Country codes *Date formats in various languages *Directory/Languages
*Disambiguation *External links *Final international solution
*Genders of languages *Help:How to start a new Wikipedia *Help:Transwiki


  • Landeskenncodes
  • Language code
  • Language codes
  • Language codes/Conflicts
  • Lexical alternates
  • Linguistic merging
  • Lis tout lang ki genyen sou Wikipedia
  • List of Wikipedias by edits per article
  • List of Wikipedias by speakers per article
  • List of Wikipedias/sortable
  • List of articles every Wikipedia should have
  • Lista de las Wikipèdias
  • Liste des Wikipédias
  • Louvre forbids taking photographs
  1. Meta:Language select
  2. Meta:Templates for translating language names
  3. Multilingual Wikimedians
  4. Multilingual communication
  5. Multilingualism philosophies
  6. Multilingüisme
  • United Wikipedias Forum
  • United Wikipedias Forum-fr
  • User:Anthere/Future of international Wikipedias as part of the main community
  • User:HenkvD/multilingual users
  • User:Keitei/How to start a new Wikipedia
  • User:Patrick-br/Jangada de Pedra
  • Using the python wikipediabot

Templates

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  1. Template:Translate with Systran
  2. Template:Translate with Systran/line
  3. Template:Translate with google
  4. Template:Translate with google/line
  5. Template:Updated
  6. There is also a Wikipedia in your language
  7. There is also an English Wikipedia available

Multilingualism

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  1. Thoughts on Multilingualism
  2. Thoughts on Wikipedia interlanguage priorities
  3. Thoughts on language integration
  4. Toytoy's proposed policy for wiki closure
  5. Translation guide
  6. Transwiki/nl