Appropedia seeks to develop conventions for the translation of articles that already exist in one language. This page will be used to outline and develop those conventions.

Wiki-based article translation

The advantage of wiki-based article translation is that it supports collaborative and incremental translation. One person may get the process started, and may or may not translate any section. Later translators can work section by section, and the overall article translation can grow through anonymous translation. In this way, the task of translation is divided up section-by-section. Another advantage of wiki-based translation is that images and special structures such as tables are very easily ported to the new article in this model.

Steps in wiki-based translation

  1. Identify a page for translation
    • A template at the top of the page should show what other languages the page is available in
  2. Determine the page name for the translated article (see the Tools for Translation section )
  3. Copy/paste the wikitext contents of the original article to a new article.
    • Copy/pasting the original wikitext makes it easy to maintain the original structure, plus images and tables, etc.
    • You may find this process is simplified if you have two active browser windows or tabs
    1. Open the original page for editing
    2. Click in the edit window
    3. Select all (usually Control-A)
    4. Copy to clipboard (usually Control-C)
    5. Type the new page name in the search box
    6. Click Go
      • This will take you out of the edit window of the original page
      • Assuming the page did not already exist, you will land at the Search page
      • (If the page did already exist, it should be a translation of the original page. Please update the original.)
    7. On the search page, click on the red create this page link to begin editing the new page
    8. Click in the edit window to be sure the cursor is located there
    9. Paste the clipboard into the edit window (usually Control-V)
    10. Enter an edit summary ("created new page to begin translation", or similar)
    11. Click Save page
  4. Copy the name of the new page so you can insert it in the next step
  5. Insert the (Template:trans avail template at the top of the original article
    • Follow the link to the template for instructions on how to use it, including pasting the new page name
  6. If you are working from a list such as Appropedia:Articles to translate, update that page
  7. Insert the Template:trans underway template at the top of the new article
    • The template should include a link to the original article
  8. Place the appropriate language category at the bottom of the article
  9. If appropriate, remove the language category for the original language
  10. Begin translation, section by section
    1. As each section is translated, insert the translated version and remove the original language version
  11. Once translation is complete, all the original language will be gone
  12. Change the Template:trans underway template to Template:trans validate
    • If you are able to self-validate the translation, then skip the above step and go directly to the next step
  13. When the translation is validated, change the template to the Template:trans avail template, pointing to the original (and others, if available)

Word-processor-based article translation

One potential disadvantage to wiki-based translation is that it assumes there is a community of wiki-savvy bilingual users who can share in the section-by-section translation. This model may work well when a language is well-established at Appropedia and the community of bilingual users is good sized. But when the language is just becoming established at Appropedia, the community is smaller and we face something of a chicken-and-egg challenge: we could get more articles translated if we had a larger bilingual community, and we could get more bilingual users if we had more articles translated. To get around this challenge, we can collaborate a different way. Rather than do the "divide and conquer" scheme on a section-by-section basis, we do it functionally. Assume that the person doing translation is comfortable in, for example, Word. Ask for the full article to be translated and saved in Word format. Then upload the Word document and embed it in the original article, along with a request to the wiki-savvy user community to perform the wiki-related steps to establish the translated article.

Steps in offline translation

Rough steps, need to clean up:

  • Mark the original article as "translation underway offline" (helpful if a group, such as a language class, are doing several articles in parallel)
  • Include some language in the document about licensing
  • For long translation, some parenthetical comments could help clarify "what goes where" for the wiki volunteer.
  • upload the document (provide clear instructions to do this)
  • Embed a template (need to create) which points to the uploaded document,
    • Template should add a category so that others can easily find the docs and load into wikitext.
    • Create some suggestions, point to instructions, for converting documents into wikitext.

Templates for use in translation

Tools for translation - Herramientas para la traducción

Various free web-based tools may be useful for providing bulk translation of content. Such tools provide fair but not 100% reliable translations. We recommend that you use these tools if you are literate in both languages and can verify or correct the resulting translations.

The following are out of date (from 2008?). Significant advances have been made in online automated translations.

Bookmarklets - highlight a word, click the link in your bookmarks toolbar and have a definition or translation pop up (from one of the popular services, or your favorite dictionary). [please add link or instructions]. It's hard to find a pop-up option though:

Other software:

Collaborative translation projects

http://translated.by/ collaborative translation

Utilizing Service Learning to Expand Appropedia to Other Languages

Key Resources for Students and Instructors

First pages to translate from English to Other Languages

For German

Kategorien und Artikel auf Deutsch Appropedia German Language Article Index
Online German-English dictionary, with many technical terms

Development of more advanced tools

  • Improving translation tools for MediaWiki - discusses the development of tools to make translation of wiki pages easier, and support syncing of translated pages. This would be a medium to long term project, and doesn't affect existing translation work.

External links

Retrieved from "https://www.appropedia.org/w/index.php?title=Appropedia:Translate&oldid=96787"
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