Translating the wiki

I don't particular like translated wikis, it often leads to a mess, the translations usually significantly lack behind, not only, for the reasons you mentioned. I like the approach of maintaining independent wikis, not trying to mirror any content, a lot more. We can also talk about handing out subdomains like ru.wiki.diasporafoundation.org.

I would tend to agree with you, simply from a practical point of view. The wikis in other languages can be informed by the English one but not dictated by it, and improvements made in those languages can be fed back to the English and other ones as suggestions, no more.

I tend to agree with Jonne here. Wiki's are by nature always lagging behind anyway - I really see no purpose to translate to something that is likely to lag behind even more. Help pages yes, wiki no.

Help pages should be translated as they are targeted to normal users. Our wiki is for technical stuff - technical people need to understand a lot of English anyway to get around, especially in the programming world. There is a reason why programming languages are not translated either.

But of course if someone really feels they want to translate parts of the wiki, can't stop them can we :)

The wiki contains pretty much all information now, Jason - non-technical as well as technical, including basic user guides and 'getting started' tips. I agree it's the non-technical information which is more useful to translate.

i like the way translations are implemented in http://theportalwiki.com

they simply add a subpage to the english version, for diaspora wiki it would be eg. https://wiki.diasporafoundation.org/FAQ_for_users as the original page, https://wiki.diasporafoundation.org/FAQ_for_users/de for a german version, /es for the spanish version etc.

one can easily add a box on top of the original page that shows all available translations.

the advantage over a seperate wiki for each language is, all the content stays in the same place, just on different levels. the english version will always be the main article, so it's not much harm if the translations are not as frequently updated as the english version.

and, of course, it won't cause any problems to add a new language, because no extra wiki is needed to add it.

the correct language pages will be found with the search field through content, although they still use the original english title.

I think there's no point in much further discussion. The first thing we need to decide is if we want translations in the wiki, if yes, how we implement them. I'll start a proposal for the first thing.

@seantilleycommunit no matter what method we use, if anything mirrors content at all it'll get out of sync. The solution is to not to try mirror content. Distinct wikis encourage that IMO.

I think this is something where we have to go for the most practical solution. No matter how desirable it might be to have co-ordinated translations of the wiki, unless this can be done via a tool such as WebTranslateIt, I think it's going to be unworkable and lead to many out-of-date things appearing in different translations. I doubt whether this is possible on a MediaWiki wiki, so that means it would not be a good idea to try to keep the wiki translations co-ordinated.

I suspect therefore that it will be a better solution to have different subdomains of the wiki for different languages, which can then be developed somewhat independently.

It would probably be a good idea to have a group or mailing list for people involved in updating the wiki, so that if there is an important update, everyone can be alerted and update the wiki in their language as soon as possible.

Oops, I meant to say that it would be great to have translations of the main project site as well. This can be done using WebTranslateIt.

If this were done, the first time a user visited the project site or wiki, they could be presented with a pop-up asking them to select their language from a list. This could then be stored as a cookie and used to serve up the right translation of the project site and direct them to the correct subdomain of the wiki. Hopefully.

What about this? http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Translate

I still think that aiming for word by word or even page by page translation will just lead to even more outdated stuff than localized content will contain anyway.

Some people seem to think that the proposal is 'Should there be wiki content in different languages? YES/NO.'

It's not this: there will be the aim to have good information available in as many languages as possible whatever the outcome.

The issue is: should all those translations be available on the same site (and if so, how will that be managed to make sure everything is kept up to date)?

Or, would it be better to allow diaspora* community members from different language communities to create and manage their own content, which may differ from the English text (and perhaps be more relevant to speakers of those languages)? These could be contained in subdomains of the English wiki, for example de.wiki.diasporafoundation.org for a German wiki.

It's not a question of whether we should have information available in different languages, it's a question of what is the best way to present, store and manage that information.

If we go for the translated content on one site, speakers of other languages will be restricted to some extent to keeping to the English text. If we allow separate wikis for different languages, users of those languages can create wikis that are best for speakers of those languages.

The wiki in English is only created by English-speaking community members, so it's no more 'official' or authoritative than what could be created in other languages. And if we allow speakers of other languages to create their own wikis, they might for example create a page which is missing in the English version and which could usefully be translated into English to help English-speakers.

There is already one extant independent non-English wiki - Le guide du parfait débutant, a guide for new users in French. And there are probably others - certainly there have been in the past. So whether or not we keep to strict translations from English all on the one site, there can and should be information available in as many languages as possible.

This proposals intention is not to restrict non English content in the main wiki to translations of the English content, but whether about if we want to allow any form of non English content in it at all. There's absolutely nothing said about the scope and organization of non English content, intentionally. That's planned for follow up proposals.

Sorry, I got in a bit of a muddle, thinking of the WebTranslateIt translations, which may not apply to the wiki.

But the main point I intended to make is that this proposal is not about whether or not there should be wiki content in different languages, but whether it should be collected all in the main wiki, or in different places (to be decided in a different proposal).

Alright, you do want translations in the main wiki. Next step: How.

I see a couple of options:

1. Allow arbitrary pages with non English titles and content, for example "Häufig_gestellte_Fragen"
2. Suffix page names with the language name, for example "FAQ_for_users_(Deutsch)", only allow translations / interpretations of English content
3. Nest pages under the English ones, for example "FAQ_for_users/de", only allow translations / interpretations of English content
4. Give each language its own namespace, allow arbitrary content inside, for example "DE:Häufig_gestellte_Fragen"
5. Give each language its own namespace, allow only translations / interpretations of English content, for example "DE:FAQ_for_users"

I'm voting for 4.

I vote for either 4, or using a different subdomain for each language.

I realise this second option isn't strictly having the content in the main wiki, but I think a lot of people who voted on that misunderstood the proposal, and wouldn't actually object to this. I think it would be tidier and still give the result they were hoping for.

I'm happy iwth arbitrary content. There's nothing more authoritative about the English content - after all, some of it was written by me, and there are certainly plenty of speakers of all languages who could write better articles than I can.

@goob do you know a mediawiki extension that allows that? I thought one has to setup and maintain distinct installations of it to do that and that's a burden I wouldn't want to put on @dennisschubert's shoulders.

I don't, I'm afraid. I was guided by your earlier comments, which suggested that was a desirable solution. It seems neater to me than having pages on the same topics in different languages all mixed in together, but if it would add burden to Dennis or anyone, forget it.

If you can categorise wiki content in different languages in different namespaces on the main wiki, and that gives the same kind of notional separation, that sounds like a good solution.

In either case, I vote for option 4: separate space (however this is achieved); independent content.

My earlier comments where about handing out the subdomains to local communities wishing to host their own wiki.

A related question is, with a vote to have content in different languages hosted on the main wiki what do we do about wikis already hosted on separate sites? For example, there is http://wiki.forodiaspora.com.ar/ in Spanish.

I'm happy with such wikis to remain independent, but do those who voted for content in different languages feel that all Diaspora wiki content should be hosted in the one wiki?

i like option 3 and 4. both have their advantages. option 3 would mean there's only translated content in other languages, option 4 allows other pages too.
the problem i see with option 4 is, the translated pages are not directly connected with the original english page, which might cause some difficulties if somebody wants to find and read the original text.
i've already given reasons why i'd prefer option 3 earlier in this discussion ;) ( https://www.loomio.org/discussions/5662#comment-44256 )

So how do we cut down the list? Vote whether we want to allow arbitrary content or just translated one?

the problem i see with option 4 is, the translated pages are not directly connected with the original english page, which might cause some difficulties if somebody wants to find and read the original text.

I'm not sure quite why this would be a problem, Waithamai. If wikis are independent, each community will (hopefully) maintain and complete and up-to-date wiki in their language. As I've said before, there will be no reason to think the English text will be any more authoritative than the text in any other language. Therefore there should be no need for anyone to refer to English text, and if someone wants to read text in English, they can navigate to the English wiki and find an equivalent page (although likely not the same page) in English.

The exception to this, it seems to be agreed, will be the technical documentation. This would be maintained only in English. In this case, links to the relevant pages in the English wiki can be given in pages in other languages.

@goob problems occur when something is changed and the translated pages lag behind. some communities are more active than others.. so i'd like to keep the pages directly connected to each other. but it will work either way..

@jonnehass probably it would be more useful to vote whether to use an own namespace for each language or to include them in the main namespace.. but dunno

Lag of the kind you describe would surely only be a problem if the translation were tied to the English text. If the wikis in different languages have independent content, there will be no lag.

Obviously if a particular community stops updating their pages, that will not be good, but that would be a problem whether the wiki content was tied to or independent of the English version. And the solution is to find ways to keep communities more active, which is a different matter. I don't think the possibility of a community becoming dormant in updating the wiki in their language is in itself an argument to have content tied to the English wiki.

IMHO, OSM is a very bad example.
WMF a positive one:
Let's see an example page: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Diff
It is based on template Languages
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Languages
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Languages/Lang
I think that it is the best solution for this kind of work

I'm not sure how to vote on this, because I would prefer each language community to be able to record information in their own way, but the vote for each language to have a separate namespace was defeated, and it would be far to chaotic to have completely unrelated pages in all sorts of languages floating around on the same wiki.

I don't really like idea of maintaining the supremacy of English in diaspora. In some cases, e.g. the main diaspora app, it makes sense, because it's developed in English, and text has to be the same in each language as it is used in very specific ways, so strict translations is sensible. However a wiki is purely text, with no strict reference to something else, so there is no reason to compose text in one language and translate directly into other languages.

I still feel it would be better to allow each language an area to create their own wiki. However, as the vote was not to allow each language their own area, the only real option is to force each language to translate directly from English. However, I think it will be a shame if this is what ends up happening, for the reasons above.

So this vote is kind of, I would really like to vote no, but given the results of the previous votes, my only option is to vote yes. Unless someone can suggest another way forward.

So now people go ahead and create non English categories... like https://wiki.diasporafoundation.org/Category:Comunidad

Opinions?

Or worse: Templates: https://wiki.diasporafoundation.org/Template:Idiomas