Translating

The very nature of the project is multi-lingual and multi-cultural. And although english is (currently) our lingua franca it may not be so in the future—or so we hope—as each community takes over the project and molds it to their needs and objectives.

In the meantime, here are some tips, tricks and things to keep in mind while trying to bridge the language barrier that will hopefully make everybody's life simpler and more productive.

NOTE: most of the things that follow are a personal PoV (by User:Xavi).

fast & furious

So you want to translate a wiki-page? If the page has never been translated, please check #first translation below. Else here's a summary:

1. using the (+/-) link in the blue-translations bar, edit the page's language navigation links by adding a link to your future page: [[something/lang-xx|targetLanguage]]. See IANA's lang codes.
   • Keep in mind the guidelines for #editing /translations sub-page.
2. follow the /lang-xx missing link you've just created and paste the contents of the original page as-is (you should procure the original page's raw wiki-text).
   • NOTE: in the blue-bar you will see to the right something like [ID# 30630] which the base version for your translation and should be used as the version parameter of {{Translation | ...blah... }} you'll be adding.
   • it'll help you #maintaning the translation.
3. paste the raw wiki-text into the new [[something/lang-xx|targetLanguage]] page
   1. remove unwanted templates and or categories. In particular, replace the {{Translations}}) with the {{Translation | ...blah... }} at the top
      • make sure you note & update the version of the original page used—as this will greatly simplify #maintaning the translation!
   2. add {{Ongoing Translation}} below it
   3. preserve section headers
      • add before each header a line with <div id="original header"/> (er... obviously, replacing original header by whatever is the original header... )
      • this allows linking regardless of target language and/or its wording

Now you can go back to you the page, translate it at ease, and when you're finished, just remove the {{Ongoing Translation}} tag.

first translation

1. you must edit the source / original page
   1. at the top, after any other header templates—like {{OLPC}}—insert {{Translations}}
   2. save it (the source page)
2. you will notice a missing link in the left of the blue bar that looks like something/translations, click on it to edit the language navigation section of the page
3. in said something/translations page, make a link to the original version:
   • [[something|originalLanguage]] (ie: [[Core principles|english]])

Follow the #editing /translations sub-page below on how to add your translation to it.

editing /translations sub-page

In the blue-translations bar there's a symbol (+/-) that lets you edit the available translations. The resulting page (which is extremely minimalist in that it basically just holds a single line with the links to the translated pages) should look like this in edit:

[[Core principles|english]] | [[Core principles/lang-es|español]]

and the visual:

العربية| deutsch | Ελληνικά | english | español | français | 日本語 | 한국어 | português|русский

So to add a new translation, you would add [[something/lang-xx|targetLanguage]] replacing xx with the 2/3 letter code used to identify languages. Please keep in mind the following:

1. keep targetLanguage short and in its native form (ie: español, not spanish)
2. there's a " | " (mark the spaces) between links,
3. keep them in alphabetical order (as far as possible)

wiki pages

You are not forced by any means to use what follows—although it may save some time and help develop a standard way of doing things. By no means we are implying this is the best way, and some steps may seem arbitrary, and not really optimal; although their cost may be worthwhile. Any feedback is welcome!

The 'basic' structure of a 'standard' translation is based on the following premises:

1. there's a base page you want in another language
2. you want to keep it as a 'mirror' translation
3. little or no reverse-flow towards the original

One of the main problems when translating is that your personal choice may not be the best one. Text-wise that is not a problem, and here the wiki spirit shows the true power by allowing a more democratic choice of wording. The problem arises from the fact that we are not translating text but also structure (headers, sections, etc.). So if we happen to pick a 'wrong' section header, anything linking to it will be broken when we try to make things better—defeating the wiki kaizen spirit of constant improvements. In order to avoid getting stuck in bad translations, here are some techniques and tips that may help the kaizen spiriti of a wiki-editor.

creating the translated page

Usually you can give a page any name you like, although I recommend using a sub-page technique that uses the language identification: originalPage/lang-xx. This comes in handy as the volume of pages in the xx language grows and won't be able to recall all the exact names of all the translations. So if you find yourself translating a link to say The OLPC Wiki you may wonder what is the exact translation used for your language. Appending /lang-xx to the link takes care of that. If by any chance the page hasn't been translated yet, you may create a redirect page to the original version and do the translation later.

how to set up the translated page

A page worth translating will surely be split up in sections and sub-sections, which are latter used as anchors by the hyper-text system, allowing to refer and link to specific sections. Again, if we translate the section/anchor name, when a better translation is found the links will brake. A simple solution (leveraging on the /lang-xx technique) is to avoid the problem altogether by preserving the original anchors.

For example, if we were to translate the section ==Home==, we could translate it into spanish as either Hogar or Casa—context will probably make one more likely than the other, but you can't always be certain. The problem arises when that header is being used as an anchor for some link: OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/The Laptop Experience/Zoom Metaphor#Home. This 'example' link, is very interesting (although extremely peculiar and rare) because it depends on the original title page OLPC Human Interface Guidelines, the chained subpages The Laptop Experience and Zoom Metaphor, and finally the anchor/section name Home. Each one of them may have multiple possible translations.

The simplest solution is to make the links independent of the translation. The /lang-xx takes care of the page-links and the following trick of the anchor:

 # ORIGINAL          # TRANSLATION 1      # TRANSLATION REVIEWED
                     <div id="Home"/>     <div id="Home"/>
 == Home ==          == Casa ==           == Hogar ==

While the links will always remain basically the same:

OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/The Laptop Experience/Zoom Metaphor#Home
OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/The Laptop Experience/Zoom Metaphor/lang-es#Home

NOTE: only the /lang-xx has been added—greatly simplifying the linking.

hooking the translation to the wiki

In a wiki, an unlinked page is as good as no page; so we need to somehow make sure that people navigating the site actually can reach those pages in a sensible way. The current technique is based on three elements:

1. a template to be included in the translated page,
2. a template to be included in the original page, and
3. a sub-page indexing the original page's translations (originalPage/translations).

This triad serves two main uses: reader & translator.

reader

it allows the multi-lingual navigation by presenting all the translations of a given page in a homogeneous way while avoiding the typical error of forgetting to update all translations with the 'new' translation.

translator

by keeping track of the original and diff (to current) anybody can review if the current page is up-to-date in respect to the original.

maintaning the translation

Wikis being what they are, mean that what you translated yesterday is not today's version... so how do you manage the evolution of the original? Fortunately, wiki pages have an essential thing: history; and an extremely useful function: diff. Remember when the {{Translation | ...blah... }} template was added, there were three mandatory parameters:

1. lang = the 2-3 characters denoting the target language of the translation
2. source = the page name (sans [[]]) that is being translated
3. version = the ID of the actual revision or edition being translated

It is crucial this value is correctly recorded (and updated) as it will allow a consistent way to handle the evolution of the original in regard to the translation.

The version number (ie: 30534) appears in the original page in the upper right corner (ie: [ID# 30534]). This number, together with the source page name will be used to perform a diff between the version translated and the current version (of the original page).

By following the diff link (bottom-right of the blue translation bar) you can verify the changes (if any) of the translated-version-# with the current-version-#—just by following it.

IMPORTANT: When updating a translation, you must update the version. (Just copy paste the # shown in the original page). This will allow translators and reviewers to work only on the sections that have changed without actually having to review both documents in order to find differences (some of which may be trivial from the text perspective, but crucial from the exactitude and validity of the content—ie:latest build, etc).

laptop.org

Please refer to the Localization page for further information on the l10n efforts of www.laptop.org.

translating the HIG

So you want to put the OLPC Human Interface Guidelines in your language? Don't be intimidated by all the mumbo-jumbo of the internals, admittedly not the most user friendly, but once you get the hang of it you'll be able to concentrate in the content and not the structure—but you must still keep an eye on it! ;)

Soon an explanation on how to hook things up, and not die in the process...

native structure

The original or native structure of the HIG is a set of sub-pages and sub-sub-pages (iirc 4 levels):

OLPC Human Interface Guidelines
       OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Activities
              OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Activities/Activity Basics
              ...
       OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Design Fundamentals
              OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Design Fundamentals/Know Your Audience
              ...
       ...

The original structure has a set of navigational templates that link these pages and its navigation. IIRC, there are 4 templates handling this.

translated structure

Basically we add sub-pages denoting the translated version onto the structure:

OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/lang-es
       OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Activities/lang-es
              OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Activities/Activity Basics/lang-es
              ...
       OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Design Fundamentals/lang-es
              OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Design Fundamentals/Know Your Audience/lang-es
              ...
       ...

And use a modified version of the navigational templates. Same name with a -lang postifx, and some reworking in the parameters (mainly adding the language code).

Because we want people to be able to find the translated versions, as with the multi-lingual /translations page, we now have those kind of pages here too:

OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/translations
       OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Activities/translations
              OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Activities/Activity Basics/translations
              ...
       OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Design Fundamentals/translations
              OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Design Fundamentals/Know Your Audience/translations
              ...
       ...

So once you add a translated page, you should also add it to the /translations page of the original.

The most hideous (or ugly) aspect is that you want to preserve links regardless of the language, and also we must take into consideration that the term originally used by the translator may not be the best-fit for the community as a whole. So, how do we get around the real possibility that when translating Home, you may have used a term that although valid, is not really the best one and that we want to modify it without breaking things up? Two things:

1. preserve the original section headers (using the <div id="originalSectionHeader"/> trick)
2. factor out the page title into a specific page:

OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/lang-es                    # this is an exception - no title for the root
       OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Activities/lang-es/title
              OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Activities/Activity Basics/lang-es/title
              ...
       OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Design Fundamentals/lang-es/title
              OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Design Fundamentals/Know Your Audience/lang-es/title
              ...
       ...

NOTE: the /title page is a sub-page of your /lang-xx page! Be careful not to translate / step-over some other language! The language extended navigation templates use these title subpages to present things the way the look. The down side to this is that you want to preserve said 'titles' within the document, forcing you to do some very weird looking code:

[[OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Core Ideas/lang-es|{{:OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Core Ideas/lang-es/title}}]]

whose sole purpose is to link a page showing the translated title...

Summarizing, when translating the HIG, you should end up with the following structure:

OLPC Human Interface Guidelines
OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/translations
OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/lang-es
OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/lang-es/title                    # this is an exception - no title for the root
       OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Activities
       OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Activities/translations
       OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Activities/lang-es
       OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Activities/lang-es/title
              OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Activities/Activity Basics
              OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Activities/Activity Basics/translations
              OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Activities/Activity Basics/lang-es
              OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Activities/Activity Basics/lang-es/title
              ...
       OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Design Fundamentals
       OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Design Fundamentals/translations
       OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Design Fundamentals/lang-es
       OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Design Fundamentals/lang-es/title
              OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Design Fundamentals/Know Your Audience
              OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Design Fundamentals/Know Your Audience/translations
              OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Design Fundamentals/Know Your Audience/lang-es
              OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Design Fundamentals/Know Your Audience/lang-es/title

NOTE: in italics are the pages that already exist, and shouldn't be created, just modified. And in the example, the spanish version (/lang-es) are used but you should create the whatever /lang-xx for you language using the standard code (see above for the link).

pitfalls: things to watch out

Please do keep the Template:Translation in each page and the correct lang & version number for future updates and maintenance of the translated page.

Note that there are two navigation bars (besides the language bar), one at the top, the other at the bottom. In that navigation bar you also have to update the lang parameter.

foreign wiki pages

As the global effort picks up speed, it's our hope and interest that local communities will develop things in their local languages that we may want to share globally. This is already happening, and we are trying to develop the necessary templates to make life simpler (probably a variation on the local translation templates mentioned above). In the meantime, take a look at Hello World!.

suggested translations

Here's a list of pages that could be worthwhile translating. Please verify with Translated pages in order to avoid duplicate translations before jumping into one.

• Demo notes
• Software release notes

Fancy a subject you can't find or not in your language?

Ask for it!

english	Want to read about something in your language? Either write the subject (or better the page name) and we'll do our best to satisfy your request	Ask for it!
español / castellano	Queres leer sobre algo en tu lenguaje? Anota el tema (o mejor aun, el nombre de la pagina) y haremos lo posible para cumplir tu deseo.	Pedilo!
français	Voulez vous prendre connaissance de quelque chose dans votre langue ? Ecrivez le sujet (ou mieux encore le nom de la page en question) et nous ferons tout notre possible pour satisfaire votre demande.	Demandez le!
portugues	Querer ler sobre algo em sua língua? Qualquer um escreve o assunto (ou melhora o nome da página) e nós faremos nosso mais melhor para satisfer a seu pedido.	Pedir ele!
한국어	귀하의 언어로 무언가를 읽고 싶으세요? 주제 (또는 페이지 이름)를 쓰십시오. 그러면, 우리는 당신의 요구를 만족시키기 위하여 최선을 다할 것입니다.	요청하세요!
中文	您想读到一些语言? 要么写课题(或更好的页名称),我们会尽最大努力满足你的要求	要求!

Petition for translation

Hi Xavi i would like to read this page in spanish..

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Software_Release_Notes

licensing

Software licensing

translate Using QEMU on Windows XP

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Using_QEMU_on_Windows_XP/lang-fr

MMM_lesson_plan_translations

we need people that can translate this lessons. for a pilot place (like peru)

Communication Channels

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Communication_channels

Fancy a subject you can't find or not in your language?

Ask for it!