Wikipedia talk:Translation/Archive 1

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Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 4

Talk Page Format

I wonder if we could do something to cleanup and/or organize this page better. For instance, we have multiple "existing translation requests" sections, and there seems to be no common discussion sections. You have to scroll up and down the page to find anything. The TOC is getting long and cumbersome. I'm just suggesting; I hope there is some agreement here. Thanks.--THE FOUNDERS INTENT TALK 14:32, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

This has to the worst run project on Wikipedia.--THE FOUNDERS INTENT TALK 12:56, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

It's "run" by its editors, i.e. you :-) It used to be better before this weird translation entry system was invented. I guess many people, like me, simply gave it up. Saint|swithin 10:38, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
BTW, this is only meant to be a talk page, anyway: usually someone would simply archive (i.e. chuck out) old discussion - feel free to archive whatever you fancy. Saint|swithin 10:41, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

To propose a page to be translated

Where the new Wikipedia:Translation says "To propose a page to be translated, type the name of the article below and follow the instructions" it is totally unclear if one is to enter the foreign-language article name or an English-language name. Presuming the former (as the only thing that really makes sense), mightn't it be simpler to fill in two fields, one for language code and the other for article name? - Jmabel | Talk 23:31, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

No, in this case it means the English-language page. The link created is the subpage where you can change the translation status (request, in progress, etc) as well as talk to those working with you on it.
For example,
I just changed the instructions to read To propose a page to be translated, type the name of the article below in English and follow the instructions. Thanks for the heads-up. I'm used to the system by now, so it didn't occur to me that it wasn't clear.
Marialadouce | parlami 01:29, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
I forgot that there are now a few articles in the English Wikipedia in the new system. Here is an example that will hopefully be clearer:
Marialadouce | parlami 01:39, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I arrived at this page through a direct link, without logging in. Though I'm a registered Wikipedian, in order to log in now, I'd have to leave this page I'm happy to have found at last. I have a translation project, but being fairly new at the technical side of things, I need someone's advice. I'm planning to translate the Donner Party into Hungarian, then transfer it--along with the original in English--from the en.Wiki to the Hungarian version of Wikipedia. In addition--even though the entry has the GNU--I'm not sure if I need permission to translate or not. Please advise. Thanks, 63.215.28.44 19:34, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

You don't need any additional permissions to translate for another language Wikipedia. It's all under GFDL. You should indicate that you are taking material from another language Wikipedia, not writing from scratch. Standards vary for how to do that. To be on the safe side, indicate it in an edit summary in the target article & also mention it at the top of the "References" section. If the latter is not the standard for Hungarian, someone will assuredly fix it accordingly. - Jmabel | Talk 01:17, 15 February 2007 (UTC)


I'm a little bit confused and surprised, though it shows that the English articles hold the biggest number among the list of languages dealt with in Wikipedia (more than 2 Million articles), many are asking for translations into English. Well, has anyone asked for a translation from an English Wiki article into a foreign language like Arabic for instance? I have noticed that there is some shortage in Arabic articles, and I might be able to help. I want to know how do i submit a translation into Arabic, basically from an English Wiki article. PS: I'm an Arabic native translator. And one more thing, If anyone asked for a certain article to be translated into Arabic, how can I get a notice or something to know exactly the Arabic shortage? I want to be helpful as much as i can.

Generally that translation request would be listed on the destination language wikipedia, in this case ar:. See the Arabic equivalent to this page for detailsLeadSongDog 04:43, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Existing translation requests

If we are going over to a new system, is there a proposal for how we will import existing translation requests into the new system? - Jmabel | Talk 23:32, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if this will be done for the English version; we must see what Jean-Michel has planned. However, in the French Wikipedia, the translations in progress before the new Project Translation was set up were only partially converted to the new system. For example:
I like it this way, as those who are unsure about using the new system may ease into it by seeing how the page they're working on looks on the main translation page, but don't necessarily have to plunge into the new system right away. They can take their time finishing their work on the old system while pottering around with the new.
Marialadouce | parlami 01:20, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
Hello Jmabel, nice to hear from you. Yes of course, existing translation requests need to be imported into the new system. I just finished to do it for the requests which are less than two months old
You can find a list in Category:Translation sub-pages. They are 66 of them currently.
By the way, I wrote and maintain a TODO list at the top of this page. If you see something missing, please complete it or ask me about it.
Jmfayard 13:45, 18 November 2006 (UTC)


Oups, I misunderstood your question. My new answer is here : Wikipedia:Bot_requests#Wikipedia:Translation-- Jmfayard 23:33, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm finding that the German Translation page is having trouble loading, many times to the point where it is (Not Responding). Anyone else?--THE FOUNDERS INTENT TALK 14:25, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

General

Could someone translate this into English, please. (This page has suddenly become puzzling.) —Ian Spackman 23:26, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Yep sorry. A new translation infrastructure is being imported and translated from fr:Projet:Traduction. If you find other mistakes in Wikipedia:Translation, please report them here. Jmfayard 23:57, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Translation of the Week

What exactly is the point of the "translation of the Week" ?

Is it here to give a proof that "voting is evil" ? What does it mean that you "support" this or that article as translation of the week ? Does it mean that you will help to translate it ? If yes, why should you then have to wait, why should you stop if someone else find it not interesting ? Just do it if you want you find it interesting. If not, what does it bring to the people who will do the work ?

Jmfayard 13:08, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

  • I assume that your first question is rhetorical, so I will skip it.
  • Hopefully, as on all of the dozens of "of the week" collaborations, people who "support" are (at least tentatively) volunteering.
  • Anyone can work on anything at any time, and (speaking only for SPATRA, because it is the only one I'm involved in), many drop off of our radar because someone takes them on individually. You shouldn't at all stop just because something is listed.
  • Typically, what the project accomplishes is that it lets us take on rather difficult articles that almost no one would be able to take on alone. For example, our current translation (es:Trillo ==> Threshing-board/Translation, which is almost certain to take more than a week) is full of archaic agricultural terminology, allusions to ancient writers who are known by different names in Spanish than they are in English, etc., and has a rather complex citation apparatus. There aren't a lot of people who would take this on alone. Our previous one (Rafael Maroto) was thick with early 19th century military terminology, very formal government pronouncements, and allusions to events that, for an English-speaking audience, needed explanation rather than just translation. Occasionally some one or two people can do something like this on their own (two of us, myself and the original author, pretty much translated Paragraph 175, another toughie, from German). But mostly, if these are left until someone wants to take it on all on their own, they either never get started, or are abandoned halfway. - Jmabel | Talk 07:14, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Interesting. Rough proposition : perhaps it should be renamed Collaborative Translation (because that's what it is ; it can last more or less than one week, there can be simulateneus translation of the week) and to avoid the "vote - don't contribute" problem, it could be something more in the spirit of http://www.pledgebank.com/

Reason why a collaborative translation is needed : it is full of archaic agricultural terminology, allusions to ancient writers who are known by different names in Spanish than they are in English, etc., and has a rather complex citation apparatus

I promise to help to translate this article but only if 5 other persons do the same

Current volunteers

Jmfayard 10:12, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I have no idea why this last should be an issue. Wikipedia:Spanish Translation of the Week seems to be working well, and has been working well for several years. Why mess with it? - Jmabel | Talk 17:01, 5 December 2006 (UTC)


Right, let's not change anything for now. Jmfayard 17:22, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I can't tell whether your last reply should be read as "OK, let's leave SPATRA alone" or as sarcasm about WP:TIE. I thing redoing WP:TIE to achieve much more granularity and to allow pieces to be transcluded in various ways is a great idea; I think you are going a good direction on this. But WP:SPATRA is an entirely different matter. It isn't facing a comparable problem of scale. - Jmabel | Talk 05:46, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
Hello, no there was no sarcasm in my answer. Please keep in mind that I'm not fluent in english (which is my 3rd or 4th language) and that this makes my written answers looking less sharp and more harsh that whas I had in mind when I wrote them. Jmfayard 08:03, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Questions

Jmabel and others, I have a few questions

Which template do you use to indicate that an article is heavily based on a translation from another wikipedia ?

I discovered {{FRref}} and {{SPATRAref}}. Is there nothing for the other languages ? Why not a single template ?

{{FRref}}

Doesn't you have an additional template to be put in the talk page which says that the original article was under the GFDL licence ... in the v ersion ... see the authors in the page history ...

We have fr:Template:Traduit de for this

  • We do not have one single template for this, just recommended text. A template might well be in order; at the time I was putting together this process (about 2-1/2 years ago), templates with parameters were still rather discouraged. I don't know much about {{FRref}}; {{SPATRAref}} came about from one particular project, the "Spanish translation of the week". - Jmabel | Talk 07:14, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
OK, that will be {{Translation/Ref}}. I updated the instructions displayed in a translation sub-page. Jmfayard 10:12, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
2 questions:
  1. Is there any reason to have a slash in the name of a template? Normally we try to avoid that.
  2. It is possible I misunderstand, because the template uses some moderately advanced features, but it looks to me like if no permalink is provided this will say misleadingly that it was translated from the current version, which will be a lie once the foreign-language page is ever edited. Also discourages using this template for articles already translated, since it will be difficult belatedly to track down the exact version that was used. - Jmabel | Talk 16:53, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
  1. A namespace was very helpful because I used a lof ot internal templates. I don't want to change. But this template is not internal, so you can rename it to what you think most appropriate. Modifiy Template:Translation/Instructions accordingly
  2. OK. I changed the template.
Jmfayard 17:22, 5 December 2006 (UTC)


Existing Translation Requests

{{Translation request}} is now a redirect of {{Translation}}. So no problem for the future translation requests made with the old syntax, but what do we do with the existing translation requests ? This was your question.

The template used in the existing translation requests have been renamed from {{Translation request}} to {{Translation request (old)}}. The same trick of superposition of the old template and the translation sub-page if it exists (as used in {{Translation}}) is used.

For example :


Template
Translation

These changes don't make sense: they change the purpose of an existing template. Also, why would you tag something with information about where to make a translation request? This makes no sense to me at all. - Jmabel | Talk 20:52, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

You were right. I think I solved the problem now. See :
Jmfayard 10:12, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
I, for one, really dislike this last one: it looks absolutely excessive for something at the top of an article page.
Frankly, I think this whole thing should go on talk pages. I objected to this {{translation}} template being on article pages when it was first introduced a year or two ago, but now that you have elaborated it, my objection is only stronger. - Jmabel | Talk 16:58, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
They are pros and cons. I need to think about it. Jmfayard 17:22, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
Sorry for the delay; I was travelling quite a bit at the weekend, leaving me with no internet connection.
Jean-Michel asked me to translate and explain our points of view on the translation templates, as he feels that his English may be prone to misunderstandings.
He gave a lot of thought to putting said template on the discussion page and even created a modified version of it, as shown below:
He kept in mind that some articles in en: already have lots of templates scattered over the top of the talkpage (example: Talk:Linux), making the addition of the translation template quite messy. This is part of the reason why we oppose putting it on the talkpages. The others are:
  • There's much, much less traffic on the discussion pages than on the articles themselves. If we put the template on the discussion pages, we risk losing potential translators - people we can introduce to the project. While exploring fr:, I have often found pages with a translation request banner, and have worked on them or "pushed" them back up the request list to allow someone else with more experience with specialised vocabulary discover it.
  • Some may say that putting the template on the article page will distract people or annoy them, but we feel that if it annoys them that much, then they should work on the article to enable its removal.
I, for one, feel that the template should be left on the article page during all the steps of the translation process: request, in progress, proofreading, etc. You may say the template is too big and distracting, but to me that's the whole point of putting it there in the first place; the article needs to be recognised as a work in progress or a request for translation, or no one (except perhaps the most dedicated translators with the request page on their watchlist) will notice otherwise. I know plenty of people who read Wikipedia and have done so for months or years while ignoring all but the "edit this page" tab above; they will certainly never take a look at a discussion page, even if the subject is a passion of theirs.
I hope my explanation has been clear. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask! We're all here to make the project more accessible to everyone, after all. Marialadouce | parlami 14:16, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Thank you Maria for your help.
Just one thing to add : my main proposition was that the template should be put at the top of the article not right after the translation request is made (where it could stay for weeks, which can be annoying) but only when someone begin to translate it. Since then, it should not last very long, and it is very useful to have it there, both for the readers who will know that some work is being done and for the translator and proofreader (it's better to have the information you need to update right where you are working). Jmfayard 17:07, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
That makes more sense. If it is about translation in progress, it is reasonable to have it on the article page. If it is just about a translation request, it is not. - Jmabel | Talk 08:22, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

So is this ready to cut over?

I copied over some caveats that I noticed had been lost in the transition. I'm not going to pass judgment either way on whether this new process is better: it is certainly more scalable. I find it more confusing, myself, but since I devised the old process of course' I didn't find it confusing: it is quite possible that others did.

In any case, are we ready to cut over? If so, then WP:TIE should be made to redirect to Wikipedia:Translation instead of Wikipedia:Translation into English, and we should start depopulating the superseded pages. - Jmabel | Talk 06:18, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Joe, yes, I think it is ready to cut over.

The most difficult thing is now to merge the current "Regional Projects" (except the ones which are some kind of translation of the week) with our language specific pages

This requires some diplomatic skills. Do you think you can do it ?

Jmfayard 12:37, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I think some will take it badly no matter how nice we are. These are, after all, their babies, in a way, especially since a lot of them are a one- or two-man project. We really should go for it once and for all, though. Arria Belli/Marialadouce | parlami 12:47, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
I've done it except for the german and japanese projects. Jmfayard 11:55, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Previous Month, Previous Year

The code in the ">> see [Completed Translations/Proofreaders Needed/In Progress/Translation Requests] for the previous month" line, points to December 2007.

Here is the originial code: 

{{PREVIOUSMONTHNAME}}_{{CURRENTYEAR}}

Which can be temporarily fixed with : 

{{PREVIOUSMONTHNAME}}_{{PREVIOUSYEAR}}

but it would be preferable to have some type of "if then" statement to see if it needs to roll back to the previous year. Something like: 

if CURRENTMONTHNAME = "January"
   then DISPLAYYEAR = CURRENTYEAR-1

and then display: 

{{PREVIOUSMONTHNAME}}_{{DISPLAYYEAR}}

Does anyone know how to fix that? Can it be done?

Thanks
I found a quite nice solution to this problem :
{{ #time:F Y| -1 months }} = April 2024
Jmfayard 21:38, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Did we fix something that wasn't broken?

The old system was simple and easy to navigate. If the new system has any of the old requests, I'm unable to find them (& I know there was a backlog). Did we fix something that wasn't broken for the people who were actually doing translations? Williamborg (Bill) 02:01, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Only time will tell, but it works very well since a couple of months on fr:Projet:Traduction. The main page's role (Wikipedia:Translation) is to let us see quickly the latest translation requests and work currently being done. This was quite hard with the new system. To browse all the requests, did you browse Category:Translation sub-pages or Wikipedia:Translation/*/Lang and then the relevant language ? Jmfayard 08:48, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
I did. Now that I'm back from Wikibreak, I was going to work a few translations. Only 4 of the roughly dozen Norwegian translation requests I'd been watching are still there; and none of them are particularly interesting. Of course the othrs might cave been completed, but that is a major surge for this cluster, if so. Ah well, if there is anything that you can depend on, it is death, taxes & change in the Wikipedia... :) Skål - Williamborg (Bill) 03:13, 6 January 2007 (UTC)


It's possible that I'm asking this on the wrong page (mea culpa), but my question is related to the Translation category. The other day I was able to open "Available translators," but that's no longer the case. Where did the page disappear? When I click on the title, it leads me to an incomplete list, indicating that there are 6o-plus names in all, but stops right there. I'm looking for the list of Hungarian translators, particularly one called Alensha. SOS! Thanks, Marta 22:19, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Are you not looking for Wikipedia:Translators available ? (Jmfayard 23:31, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Jmfayard! I found it now, but previously it was called Available Translators. Someone must've changed it. Thanks again for your prompt response. Marta 23:54, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

LGBT WikiProject

The LGBT studies WikiProject has just started a translation section, so if there are any translators here interested in LGBT issues, please sign up with us, or even just give your input. Thanks, Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 14:21, 5 January 2007 (UTC)


Translating image?! (also question about permanent link)

(I am refering to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Translation/Image:Chinese_Pythagoras)

How to translate an image? The image already existed. The person simply wants someone to translate the characters inside the image, but not the page that uses this image. The person who requested it was asking for "informative image description pages". How can I do that? Also, should I make a new page because there's no information on Chinese Pythagoras?

How do I obtain "Permanent link to the translated version"? Where do I click?

Quite confused...

OhanaUnited 06:03, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorting ? Wikipedia:Translation/*/Lang/de

Is there no longer any way to sort requests into topics, or alphabetically, or anything? Saint|swithin 16:34, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Of course.
Now that I did it, it would be great if someone speaking german could compare the new page and the old page, because I did not migrate every translation request, either because it didn't have the english name (Na ja ich hätte das zwar manchmal ahnen könenn, da ich Deutsch spreche, aber manche Artikelnamen sind nicht so einfach zu übersetzen :) or because I thought it was too old or not very interesting.
A list of missing interesting translation requests with their english name would allow me to complete the migration task.
Jmfayard 09:38, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Extra links to add

I can't see how to add these links to the box at the top: Wikipedia:German-English translation requests/biographies Wikipedia:German-English translation requests/Translation guide Saint|swithin 16:38, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Like this Jmfayard 09:19, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! Saint|swithin 10:51, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Translation/*/Lang/de broken

This page does not display correctly. The reason is too much template transclusion of too long templates - if you look at the HTML code for the page, you'll see that the "pre-expand include size" maximum of 2 megs has been reached, at which point the server stops working on transclusions. As the page doesn't contain very many requests, the translation templates probably need to be shortened (or documentation removed, or whatever) drastically so the page works again as intended. Kusma (討論) 20:49, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Mmh, this is bad.
I see only two solutions.
Either we divide further this page in subsections (that is already done for the biographies) and the main page does not contain all the information but only the english name of the articles.
Or we use Special:ExpandTemplates like I did for this version. But then it's not as easy for the users to add their translation requests and the page is not automatically updated each time a translation is being updated. What do you think ? Jmfayard 09:32, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
The only solution is to fix the transcluded templates to be much shorter. Anything that's commented out could possibly be removed, and things that are noincluded out could be transcluded from extra subpages. (Only the raw wikitext is counted). Expanding the templates does not solve the issue at all, since it completely ruins all benefits of transclusion and basically just results in a messy list (now looking more pretty than the old lists, but harder to edit). If the translation system can't deal with 50 translation requests on one page then it isn't good enough. More subpages just make it even more complicated to request a translation in the correct place. Kusma (討論) 09:37, 6 January 2007 (UTC)


I tried to follow the explanations given on Wikipedia:Template limits about the Pre-expand include size

For Wikipedia:Translation/Darmstadt Artists' Colony, this gives us : 

-------- Step 1
{{subst:Wikipedia:Translation/Darmstadt Artists' Colony}} : 1371 bytes - 679 bytes withouth comments
-------- Step 2
{{subst:Translation/Information|...}} :   2470 bytes - 2058 bytes without comments
-------- Step 3
{{subst:Translation/Summary|...}}     :   3295 bytes
5 times {{subst:Translation/Base}} ==>    3425 bytes
-------- Step 4
{{subst:Translation/Progress|XX}}
{{subst:Translation/Base}}
{{subst:Translation/Base}}
{{subst:Translation/Progress|XX}}
{{subst:Translation/Progress|XX}}
{{subst:Translation/Base}}
{{subst:Translation/Base}}
{{subst:fullurl:Wikipedia:Translation/Darmstadt Artists' Colony|action=edit&section=0}}
{{subst:Translation/Base}}
{{subst:Translation/Base}}
                TOTAL : 5694 bytes

On this, {{subst:Translation/Base}} can be easily replaced by Wikipedia:Translation
  6 times {{subst:Translation/Base}} = 4110 bytes

Total without changes :

  • 1371+2470+3425+3295+5694 bytes = 16255 bytes.
  • 2 000 000 / 16255 = 123 templates maximum (actually a bit less, but this gives an idea)

If we remove the comments

  • 16255 bytes - (1371-679) - (2470-2058) = 15151 bytes
  • 2 000 000 / 15151 bytes = 132 templates maximum

If we remove the {{Translation/Base}} :

  • 16255 - 4110 - 3425 = 8 720
  • 2 000 000 /8720 = 230 templates maximum


I will remove the {{Translation/Base}} from the two templates, and we will see if it works as beautiful as in theory ;-)


Jmfayard 11:37, 6 January 2007 (UTC)



Damned, that change and this change which should in theory divide the pre-include size by 50% do not seem to make any differences for me. Does it for you ? It's perhaps a cache problem (I hope so). Or did I misunderstood something ?
Jmfayard 11:53, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Eurêka !

I did some benchmarks on the sandbox.

This gives : 

Benchmarks
2MO represents the expansion of

* 45 templates with the 
the 11 {{Translation/Base}} inside {{Translation/Information}} and {{Translation/Summary}}
and with
{{Translation/Instructions}} outside <noinclude></noinclude> in {{Translation/Information}}

* 65 if
Wikipedia:Translation is used instead of {{Translation/Base}} 

* 67 templates without the comments in [[Wikipedia:Translation/Darmstadt Artists' Colony]]

* 230 if we remove {{Translation/Instructions}} from {{Translation/Information}} and put in [[Wikipedia:Translation/Darmstadt Artists' Colony]] inside <noinclude>..</noinclude>

The solution to our problem was this change. Now, if only a bot could update the existing translation page


Jmfayard 14:58, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Copyrights

I have heard rumor that there are copyright issues in translating material from one Wikipedia to another without introducing "new creativity". Can someone please elaborate? I tried to read the GDFL thing, but though I know a handful of languages, legalese is not one of them. Thank you. LordAmeth 20:06, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Since the original copyright is gfdl, you need to indicate that your new article is a translation and not an original work (since translating something doesn't change its copyright status). Putting something to the effect of "translated from the xx-language wikipedia article xxxx" (eg. "translated from the finnish-language wikipedia article [[:fi:Urho Kekkonen]]") into your edit summary should be enough, since anyone who can look at the history of an article to find contributors should then be able to find the history of the original article. - Bobet 13:29, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Thank you very much. I was a bit nervous there... LordAmeth 20:38, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Hebrew

Could someone please setup the Hebrew translation pages. Nobody can request articles to be translated if there's no page for requests. Yonatanh 23:56, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

You can start the Hebrew subpage yourself here. Just follow the instructions. Arria Belli/Marialadouce | parlami 22:13, 24 January 2007 (UTC)


Rye House Plot - Looking for support

Hi, I've choosen this theme for a writing competition of the german wikipedia. Perhaps somebody is interessing to develop this article? My german account is jlorenz1@web.de. This is my email too. Thanks in advance -- Jlorenz1 02:15, 5 March 2007 (UTC) (You can also leave a message on my english talk page )

two, repeated sets of links to language-specific pages

I'm trying to make the page a little easier to read by removing some of the lists of languages. There were three lists; one was the same as the interwiki language lists, so unnecessary, and I've removed it. Now there are two lists on the page itself which are exactly the same (top right box and then below centre). I'd like to remove the ones in the box but don't know how to edit boxes like that. Maybe someone else can clear up? Saint|swithin 07:04, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Proofreading wanted

I have translated a number of articles on (mostly) German Holocaust-deniers over the past few weeks before learning of the Translation project. I would appreciate it if someone would proofread them for accuracy. I don't know if this is the right place to make this request, but to be honest I'm finding the translation project pages quite hard to figure out.

The articles are: Udo Walendy, Gerd Honsik, Carlo Mattogno, Wilhelm Stäglich, Manfred Roeder, Thies Christophersen, Bela Ewald Althans, Günter Deckert.

Also translated: Europa-Center Lfh 23:14, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi Lfh, I just glanced quickly over a couple of the translations, they look great! Don't forget to add the source at the end, something like here: [[1]] Saint|swithin 13:47, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. Done. Lfh 12:23, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Translation from Latin

I regularly contribute to the article on my home city, Mechelen, (and one or two related articles). A long time ago, even before I took on a Wikipedia user name, I rewrote the whole article but had maintained the main part of the 'History' section in a still very poor state: as a former capital (early 16th century) of the historical Netherlands (roughly Belgium and the present Netherlands), it deserves better but it's quite complicated as the city had almost never been part of its surrounding area. I came along a text in Latin dating from 1490 that might confirm or deny other (less official) sources, but my understanding of Latin is far too limited to figure it out. I would appreciate a translation into English or Dutch (I can translate between those two), e.g. by a hobbyist Latin translator. The text from the city's archives was found here on a site in the Netherlands, or just open this:

 Privilege granted by Emperor Frederick III to the city of Mechelen on January 10, 1490  — open → → → →
"Fridericus divina favente clemencia Romanorum Imperator semper Augustus Hungarie Dalmacie Croacie &c Rex ac Austrie Stirie Karinthie et Carniole Dux. Dominus Marche Sclavonice ac Portusnaonis. Comes in Habspurg Tirolis Phieretis et in Kiburg. Marchio Burgonie et Lanndtgravius Alsacie. Ad perpetuam rei memoriam. Et si imperatorie Maiestatis vire benignitas ex innata sibi clemencia quibustuis sacro Romano imperio subiectis libertatum et graciarum premia reddere consueverit idisz ex crediti nobis officy misterio prosequi teneamus. Illos tumen in primis precipuis donis afficere et singularibus honoribus dignitatibus et preheminencys extollere debere dignos censimus ymo cosdem in gremio nre celsitudinis singulariter fouendos fore summo studio incendimur quos inmote fidei constancia nullus nouerrantis fortune impetus a fide et observancia sacri Romani Imperio removere aut aliquantis per aliorsum flectere valuit. Sanc fidem muiolatam et obsequia indefessa quibus Opidum et totus facii impero districtus Mechlimen ac nra tempestute sese Sacro Imperio gratissim exhibuit cum id solum Serenissimi principis dni Maximiliani Roman Regis semper augusti ac Archiducis Austrie Ducis Burgundie Brabancie Gelrie &c Comitis Flandrie et Tirolis &c Flandriam et totum fere Brabanciam potentissimus sue Serenitatis hostes sustinerit et vitam et bona in cuis statum et honorem servandum liberali vultu et animo expendere non dubitauit. Non inmerito perisan ac tantanullius Opidi et districtus fidem perpetuitati conmendare cupientes quo planeomis etas vsisz in consumationem seculi rideat et agnoscat quantum sit quantumisz honoris et fame inmortalis pariat principis sui fidem servasse inniolatam et incontussam. Nos non per errorem aut inprovide sed animo deliberato sanosz morum ac sacri Imperio principum Comitum Baronum et aliorum fidelium et subditorum morum accedente consilio ex certa sei encia nra et plenitudine Imperialis potestatis prefatum Opidum Mechlimen et cuis districtum acertvs temporibus vsos ni hanc diem solo Dominy titulo gauden in Nobilem et perpetuum Comitatum de Nous exeanimus extulimus sublimavimus ac pricuim tenore excamus effermius et sublimanius. Hoc Imperiali edicto decernen ut idem Maximilianus Romanorum Rex simul et Illustus Philippus Archidux Austrie Dux Burgundie Brabancie Gelrie &c Comes Flandrie Tirolis &c nepos me carissimus et comes et singuli corem heredes et descenden ad quos Legittimo successionis aut alio Iure pe districtus vnatum Opidi Mechliniense peruenerint hinc inantea futuris temporibus abomibus Comites Mechlinien reputari appellari teneri et honorari et upi serpos Comites Mechlinienses existvmare scribere et reputare Ipsi similiter acipii Opidum Mechlinen omibs dignitatibus honoribus Titulis furibus preheminentys et consuetudinibus gaudere et sini debeant quibus ceteri sacri Imperio Comites et coruni subditisieti sunt hactenus et cottidie poruntur et fenuntur Legibus Statutis municipalibus consuetudinibus et abys incontrariusucier non obstan quibusennis. Quo vero dictum oppidum Mechliense, caput districtus prefati, pro meritorum suorum erga nos et sacrum Romanum imperium magnitudine, benevolenciam, nostrae Cesaree celstudinis magis agnoscat, ejus solita insignia, videlicet scutum divionibus citrinis et rubeis secundum longum interscutum meliorare constituimus. Adjicientes eidem integram aquilam nigram, nulla sui parte minutam, sed cum extensis alis, tamquam ad volatum paratis figuratam, omni modo et forma quo eade Romanorum Regis uti consueve­runt. Itavt Ipsi Mechlinen eodem Stuto Aquilas prefata in medio cuis collocata in Sigillis Annullis Clenodys ac omnibus publicis et prinatvs actibus vti antea facere consueverunt vti et fini potuerunt contradiction et impedimento cessan quoruminis. Nulle ergo omnio bonii Liceat hanc vire creacionis sublimacionis Exemonis meliocienis Armorum decreti et derogarienis paginani inserigere aut exquonis ansu temerario con traire sub pena vire indignacionis gravissima et Mille Marecutum auri puri quae contrafacien toriens quoriens contrafactum fuerit upo facto se nouerint veremissimiliter mansuros. Quaru medietatem Imperialis fiscisi­ne Exary Residuam vero partem ininziam passorum vsibus decernio applicari Primum sub nostre Imperialis Maestatis Sigilli appensidy testimonio Suarum. Dat in Opidonis Lynnitz die Decima Mensis January Anno dni Millesimoqua­drigentesimo Nonagesiomo Regnorum nostrorum Fornam Quinquagesimo Impery Tricesimo Octavo Hungarie vero Tricesimo primo.

Ad mandatum dni Imperatoris.

 Already translated names
• In English, the adjective form of Mechelen as well as an inhabitant is 'Mechlinian'; in Dutch 'Mechels(e)' and 'Mechelaar' respectively.
• Fridericus is Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilianus is Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, Philippus is Philip I of Castile aka Philip IV, Duke of Burgundy, the Handsome. — This Privilege granted in 1490 might be a recognition of Mechlinian loyalty to the Austrians in a time other cities had rebelled, see the latter article's section 'Early life'. I assume it might have made Mechelen to a County ("Comites Mechlinienses"), a little-known fact I had heard about (no-one was ever called 'Count of Mechelen' though the right would have passed on to mayors till the early 20th century and would be confirmed by the eagle in the city's arms), and for which I would like to have the proper source.
• Could "districtus Mechlimen" and "prefatum Opidum Mechlimen" be misprints, should these not be "Mechlinem"?
-

If someone is interested in doing this, please put the translation on my talk page. Kind regards. — SomeHuman 14 Mar2007 19:14 (UTC) — Preceding undated comment added 20:14, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Shortcut

This page really could use a shortcut to it, like most Wiki-space pages already have. Mr.Z-mantalk¢Review! 00:44, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Done. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 23:33, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Trivial translation and proofreading

I would like to suggest that there should be a request process for trivial translation and proofreading, such as:

  • Transliteration of a Japanese-character movie title so that it can be looked up in IMDb for more information
  • Translation of a German image description in commons so that en.wikipedia users of it can be certain that their caption is accurate.
  • Verification that a Turkish sportsperson's name has the proper diacritic characters

And other minor (perhaps 1 average paragraph or less) translation/proofreading needs. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 00:23, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Hello? Anyone? Anyone? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 17:21, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Unacceptable writing-off of old translation requests

Looking at the discussion surrounding this Byzantine system that has been introduced recently, it seems some limited efforts were made to import translation requests made under the old system. However, if what User:Jmfayard said on User_talk:Punkmorten#Wikipedia:Translation_into_English is correct, any requests from before October 2006 were discarded. Jmfayard said "I thought it was not useful to migrate all the old translation requests, because the information about them had a great chance to be not accurate anymore (either it was already translated, or the english article became better than the original in the meantime)." This is ridiculous and destructive. A large body of requests had built up, many of which were perfectly valid, and these have now been unceremoniously removed, apparently without efforts to check them individually to see if there is any truth in Jmfayard's assertions about their uselessness. Anyone familiar with Wikipedia:Requested articles knows that some requests, for articles on topics that are obscure or require specialist knowledge, but are nevertheless perfectly encyclopedic, have hung around for years. If anything, translation requests can be expected to last longer because only a small number of people will be capable of doing the translation. If you have a look at the history, take this revision for example, you can find numerous examples of translation requests that should have been preserved. The migration to this new system should only have taken place if accompanied by individual checks of every request so that their status could be updated, or they could be removed as complete, if appropriate. This is typical of Wikipedia's "it might get done if someone can be bothered" approach, combined with the seemingly ubiquitous desire to replace old pages with some bureaucratic system involving flashy templates and lots of subpages. Will anyone involved in creating this new system go back and import the old requests after performing individual checks? I doubt it, but I'd love you to surprise me. 84.13.132.115 10:42, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Help needed: "Oh darn, I understood the template only on second attempt."

I thoroughly messed up my actual "proof-reading-request" for Goldie & The Gingerbreads and only understood after another deployment of the template. Could someone help me to correct this? Obviously, I misunderstood a lot of the explanation at first. Sorry.--Psycho Chicken 14:50, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

How do I link to images in a page I'm translating?

I don't understand how to make images that appear in a German Wikipedia page show up in the English version I'm translating. Do I need to download them from the German version and then upload them on the English version. If someone can point me in the right direction (an appropriate instruction page would be great!) I'm sure I can figure it out.

Thanks for your time and help! Hedgehog33 04:12, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

If the image in the original article is implemented from WikimediaCommons, you only have to change the link from [[Bild:example.jpg|thumb|example]] or whatever to [[Image:example.jpg|thumb|example]]. Simply replace the word Bild with Image and that's it! If the image is not from WikimediaCommons you have to download the highest resolution image from German Wikipedia and upload to WikimediaCommons, the upload description should contain, where you get it from and the original transcription with the original author. I hope, I could help you! If you have any other questions, contact me! Tirkfl 09:42, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Note: If the license on the German image is fair use or otherwise not consistent with the licensing requirements at Commons, the copy must be uploaded to en.Wikipedia instead! Also, if (this is rare) the image is for some reason licensed only for use on the German Wikipedia, you're just out of luck. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:24, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Where to put the translation box after finishing a translation

I wonder, where to put the translation box showing the status etc. after finishing a translation. There should already be the tag, which indicates the article as a translation, put on the page. But what happens with the box at the top? Can it be deleted or should it be moved to the talk page? Tirkfl 09:51, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

The How-to page now states: "The person requesting the translation should then add the Wikipedia:Translation/(Name of article here) banner to the Translation Requests of this month and to the talk page of the article." in the section about requesting the translation. So it would seem that the translation template should go on the talk page, at any rate.
This puts the responsibility on the requester, not the translator, which may or may not be realistic. Also, if the article doesn't already exist, it doesn't yet have a talk page, so that would be difficult for the requester to do. At the very least, I'd think the translator should do this, not the requester.
The How-to doesn't say anything more (currently, that I could see) about what should happen to this translation template after completion of the translation. Does it stay there forever? If so, it almost seems to violate the rule that no-one should sign the articles they write. During the translation, sure, it tells interested people the status of the translation procedure, but afterwards?
Scbarry (talk) 15:57, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Translation award?

Is there any sort of barnstar or award to those that translated useful articles? OhanaUnited 23:20, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

There is the Rosetta Barnstar. Tirkfl 12:46, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

How to resolve a translation dispute?

We currently have a translation dispute (Russian->English) at the internet brigades page.

The Russian words in question are:

О ДПНИ, «русском бренде» и работе в интернете: «В интернете мы в этом плане проигрываем. Конечно, легче что-то ломать, чем что-то позитивное делать. Это баловство и хулиганство. Не только методы должны быть радикальными, но и цели. Надо выбить из них эту романтику. Важно найти такой поворот темы, не защищать власти — это само собой, надо привлекать ребят, которые умеют творчески работать в интернете. Это существенный сектор общения молодежи. У меня такое пожелание: идеологическое понимание есть, сделайте так, чтобы людям было с вами интересно». (taken from here)

and we have a disagreement over whether Mr. Surkov is saying that it is expected that the members of "Russia the young" protect the government online, or that it is expected that they not protect the government.

Can anyone advise on how to resolve this dispute peacefully and legitimately? Esn 05:02, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Any translation for the Russian text? OhanaUnited 14:43, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
There are two competing ones. You can see the full argument over here. The concrete passage in question is this: "Важно найти такой поворот темы, не защищать власти — это само собой, надо привлекать ребят, которые умеют творчески работать в интернете." I thought it would be best to post the whole paragraph here, to make its context more clear. Esn 00:23, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Removal Of Finished Translation

The German to english artical (de) Magister officiorum → (en) Magister Officiorum under April_2007, can this pleased be removed from the list of needing to be translated, i also noticed that there are a few other articals that are also finished that have not been removed.... or if some one could tell me how to do this i would be happy to go through and remove the other pages that are also finished

Philsgirl 15:27, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Looking for a word to be pronounced

I'm trying to get Baiji pronounced (Chinese), and recorded as an audio file and was wondering if this might be a good place to start.Chris_huhtalk 19:09, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Translations for Wikisource

I have started uploading a good number of French language texts pertaining to the history of Quebec/Canada at fr.wikisource.org . Some of those texts were taken straight from the archives and, to my knowledge, none was ever translated to the English language. I have already started the work of translating some of them to English. The translations are released under the GFDL.

Although my English is acceptable, I am not a professional translator and I am translating from my native language (French) to my second language (English), which is not what is supposed to be done ideally. I do not believe these translations should go live before they have been carefully reviewed and cleaned up of all errors, possible Gallicisms and other awful things. ;-) Only native English speakers can bring those translations close to perfection, which is what is aimed for in this project.

There is no translation project over at Wikisource, so I come here to call on all people able to translate texts originally written in 18th and 19th century French to contribute. Proofreaders are also welcomed of course.

Feel free to edit my drafts directly and do not hesitate to comment your changes or ask me questions if in doubt over anything. Note that if you do not already have a Wikisource account, I would recommend you create one before modifying my drafts, otherwize only your IP address will show in the revision history.

Thank you! Merci! -- Mathieugp 17:11, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Mishpachah Lev-Tsiyon English article

I screwed up and requested a Swedish translation of the Mishpachah Lev-Tsiyon article from the Swedish Wikipedia to the English one. Well, there isn't an entry on the Swedish Wikipedia! What I actually wanted to do was request a translation of a few newspaper headlines in the Media Coverage section of this article. Is there a way to correct this? Drumpler 03:30, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

What to do with dead interlanguage links?

An anonymous user, who seems to be knowledgeable both in chemistry and several languages, added several links to translations of Moonmilk, of which the following don't exist:

What should best be done with that? I'm loath to delete the dead links since there is at least some value in knowing the translations of the title. If the article were more important I could (even though I don't speak all of the languages) add a stub in each language, but that feels like overkill in this case. Any better idea? — Sebastian 02:38, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Are there any corresponding pages in the non_English wikis? If not, I would remove the links; if yes, a redirection page could be useful. Tirkfl 15:05, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
No, that's what I meant by "dead". However, my point is that they are of value. I just found another way to keep this information: The article hammered dulcimer contains a list of the title in different languages. Not optimal, either. I could also imagine to keep a hidden list, but the problem with that is that it will not automatically create the link when the foreing article is created, and it's less likely that editors will see it. — Sebastian 06:05, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Munich

I'm looking for German-to-English translators for WikiProject Munich. If anyone is interested, you can contact me. Kingjeff 15:21, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Support for new languages

I am currently researching some material concerning Finn hip hop group Raptori. Fi.Wikipedia.org has a full article, but it's entirely in Suomi and the current en.Wikipedia.org version may be only partially corroborated with the Suomi original. What progress, if any, has been made on a Finnish-language task group? - B.C.Schmerker 15:38, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Consult: organisational material translations

Hello, I'm Aphaia serving both m:Transcom and Board Election Steering Committee eventually. I am aware of that this project is mainly concerned with in-coming content translations from other languages Wikipedia into English, but wonder if you guys are interested in helping out the forthcoming Board Election.

Currently we are accepting candidates and hence their presentations (approx. 1200 chars by person). We have almost completed German, French, Spanish and Dutch translations, but there are many on-going translation in several languages. In some languages, some candidates luckily got their presentations translated, the others not yet (and never at worse). And in other many languages, there is no information in their own languages. Both for their equal opportunity and for the informing the community interested, I convince translations of those presentations are very important.

For more information, please take a look at m:Board elections/2007/Translations. In some languages, you may get more detailed information from coordinator of target language.

Thank you for your consideration. Cheers, --Aphaia 06:41, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Category:Men

To: Wikipedia talk:Translation; Hans555 (talk · contribs)

Cc: Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Gender, race and sexuality

From: Kevinkor2 (talk · contribs)

Hi everyone,

Since the middle of May, I have been removing articles about individual people from Category:Men. So far, I haven't had opposition to this.

What do other wikipedias contain in their equivalent Category:Men?

--Kevinkor2 12:47, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Tag templates for pages that are undergoing translation

This whole translation system seems extremely complicated to me. Anyway, is there a Translation Tag/Template for pages that are currently being translated? For example, I am translating Ricardo Arjona and I would like a tag/template to put at the top of the Ricardo Arjona page that says something like "This page is currently being translated from Spanish to English. For further details, to see translation progress or contact translators see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Translation/Ricardo_Arjona". This is just so that people who aren't wikipedia experts know the page is currently being worked upon before they add their changes. If there isn't a tag, could someone make one? And if they can't, will people use it if I create one? --Big silver earrings 16:17, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Ballsed-up translation requests

Hello, earlier this year I translated three-sector hypothesis and Tanja Ostojic from German to English after seeing them requested here. Unfortunately I didn't understand the template-editing process and managed to destroy the templates completely. Having gotten over that bit of idiocy I would now like them submitted for proofreading (they are pretty much 100% done) but I don't know how to recreate the templates. Can anybody help me?

Apologies to the users who requested these translations only to have their requests cocked up like this! Lfh 14:32, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand a word of "wikipedian"

Hi, Im new here. I was thinking of proofreading some articles from French to English, as I am bilingual in these two tongues.

The instructions that I have read (three or four times) are totally incomprehensible to me. They give me the impression that I will spend more times fiddling around adding on headers or links than translating the text.

It is much too complicated. I don't even know what I am supposed to click on to see the text to be translated or proofread. I'll give it a miss. Crinkles 21:46, 25 July 2007 (UTC)crinkles

Please don't despair. It's not as tough as it may seem at first, but I'd suggest you get comfortable with simple edits before tackling translations. Find a recent article that interests you. If you think you can improve it, start tweaking. No need to make it perfect, others will pitch in with their own expertise. It's part of the beauty of a voluntary collaborative environment.LeadSongDog 01:09, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Translations of sources

Is it possible to request translations of cited sources? A Hebrew external source is being used as a reference for an article on the English Wikipedia. How can I register such a translation request? TreveXtalk 13:46, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Getting all translated pages

Hello all, I'm a Machine Translation researcher trying to assemble a collection of parallel data in multiple languages. Is there any easy way to extract all the translated pages without downloading the entire Wikipedia and mining them from there? Ideally, I'd like to just crawl through the completed translations page and follow all the links, but it seems that would require a crawler/bot, which is generally not okay on Wikipedia, right?

Furthermore, will the {{Translation/Ref|es|Radio Nacional de España|oldid=86290717}} style tag be placed on all new translations? I've seen it on a few, and it's very helpful. Thanks! --Sedatesnail 21:00, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Why should crawlers be not allowed on wikipedia? The search engine bots crawl the internet all the time — wikipedia included. How many pages do you need for your research? You should have a look at more general terms of use and maybe ask an administrator. Tirkfl 12:58, 17 August 2007 (UTC)


Also, do you think there are many pages that are translated but don't have the "translated" tags and aren't part of the official translation project? Sedatesnail 21:29, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Incomplete and unclear translation howto

The translation howto hasn't made it clear to me where I should put what I've translated. Would somebody help me figure this out/put it into the howto? Marumarukun 23:04, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Infoboxes?

What is the stratgey for translating infoboxes? Does anyone know of past cases of this? Thanks! -Theanphibian (talk • contribs) 21:26, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Here is my approach:
  • I have a look, if an appropriate infobox exists in English Wikipedia,
  • then I copy and paste it from a similar article, and
  • I fill out the infobox with the correct data.
If you have any further questions, simply ask again, and we are going to work it out. — Tirkfl 13:05, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Romanization of Chinese characters

As shown in Goguryeo-related articles, different romanization systems do cause some problems. There are Wade-Giles and Pinyin romanization systems for Chinese speakerspeople who know Chinese language better, and there are McCune-Reischauer and Revised romanization for Korean speakersfor people who know Korean language better. Typically, these 4 systems produce 4 different spellings. I wonder if the administration team wants to define a clearer rule on which one(s) to use.

  1. At least for the Chinese language, Pinyin is replacing Wade-Giles because the latter one doesn't represent the "correct" pronunciation (it was more convenient for Westerners to pronounce, but the pronunciation is typically not understood by Chinese speakers in Chinese language itself).
  2. I guess that most Chinese users have no idea how Korean romanizations work, and vice versa (Korean users have no idea how Pinyin works). Because Goryeo used Chinese as the written language until the 15th century when King Sejong invented Hangul, all historical entities before the 15th century were presented in the (classic) Chinese characters. This phenomenon demands a balanced solution for both Chinese readers and Korean readers to understand the romanization forms of the historical entities. In particular, 丸都 is written as Wandu in Chinese Pinyin, but Hwando in Korean romanization. It is argued that Wandu/Hwando is a more proper expression.
  3. This problem could also affect Chinese charater romanization in the Japanese language, as well as other language systems using Chinese characters.

--Jiejunkong 23:56, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

There is already a general consensus among editors that Korean romanization should be used for articles on Korean entities, and Chiense romanization should be used for Chinese entities. This dispute is just a part of Jiejunkong's constant POV pushing that Goguryeo was "Chinese".

This aritcle is for English speakers, not Korean or Chinese speakers. Hence, the common romanization in reliable English publications should be used in the benefit of English readers of this article. Absolute majority of reliable English publications, including the major encyclopedias, recognize Goguryeo as a Korean entity and consistently use Korean romanization. In case of Hwando(Chinese:Wandu), Google books search results in 20 hits for Hwando[2] and 3 hits for Wandu[3]. 2 of 3 hits for Wandu are in fact false positives. Cydevil38 02:11, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

From this "Here you go. Hwando[4], Wandu[5]" post made by Cydevil38 at 02:45, 23 August 2007 (UTC), I couldn't see anything that can justify Cydevil38's conclusions---to name a few, the so-called "Hwando is a historical term, Wandu is not", etc. User:Cydevil38's behavior is described in Wikipedia:Wikiquette_alerts#User:Cydevil38.27s_disruptive_editing_in_Wandu_Mountain_City. As I predicted, he disappears from Talk:Wandu Mountain City where technical evidences (i.e., verifiable and reliably sourced history records) must be written down. Here is the explanation why I am quite harsh against him, who has done nothing in this wikipedia but doing edit wars in Liancourt Rocks, Sea of Japan, Goguryeo and Balhae AND counting google results. I have to point out that, in the above paragraph, he made up a non-existing consensus again (As an old friend I am no longer surprised because I have seen lots of baseless claims from him with no verifiability at all. Or let me challenge him to give us the link to the consensus poll page on the issue he claimed).--Jiejunkong 06:40, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
A fix: Liancourt Rocks and Sea of Japan should be removed from the above list because I remember that User:Lions3639 and User:Davidpdx participated in the related editing wars. And Wikipedia:Requests_for_checkuser/Case/Lions3639 once confirmed that User:Lions3639 and User:Davidpdx are sockpuppets of Cydevil38. But I forgot that the confirmation was cancelled.--Jiejunkong 07:01, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Stepping back a bit, I'm not sure I understand your starting point. You write that "There are Wade-Giles and Pinyin romanization systems for Chinese speakers, and there are McCune-Reischauer and Revised romanization for Korean speakers." I don't think we need to worry about Korean or Chinese speakers at all. Instead, the goal should be presenting things in an intelligible way for English speakers. Why would a Chinese speaker want to use the Romanizations in the English-language Wikipedia to find out how Chinese characters are pronounced? In each article we usually give all relevant versions and Romanizations for the subject of the article. For other proper names that are mentioned in the article, it's best to keep things simple: use only the most common spelling in English, and (occasionally) give the spelling in Chinese characters or other non-English scripts. --Reuben 22:24, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I fixed my statement above. The phrase "Chinese speakers" and "Korean speakers" are crossed out and replaced by "people who know Chinese language better" and "people who know Korean language better", respectively.--Jiejunkong 04:45, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
(1) Romanization is for the purpose of explaining Chinese characters in the English-language Wikipedia. If there is no Chinese character concerned, then this problem is gone. Note that the history of northeastern Asia continent were all written in Chinese characters before Hangul was invented in the 15th century. Given the Chinese characters, you have no choice but to use a romanization form to let English speakers understand what the actual entity is. (2) I respect both Chinese romanization systems (e.g., Pinyin) and Korean romanization systems (e.g., Revised Romanization of Korean). There is no such thing Chinese's system is better than Korean's, or vice versaActually if you count the number of users of each romanization system, perhaps Pinyin wins obviously, but I don't think this matters.. Here comes 丸都 and thousands of (if not millions of) similar Chinese characters. The Pinyin romanization of 丸都 is Wandu, but the Korean romanization is Hwando. A person knowing Pinyin, including the case (s)he is an English speaker (this answers your English speaker question), may not understand Korean romanization at all. Similary, a person knowing Korean romanization may not understand Pinyin at all. Which romanization should be used? That is the question.--Jiejunkong 04:18, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Again, I'm not sure I agree with (1). I don't think that Romanization is used in the English-language Wikipedia for the purpose of explaining Chinese characters, except in cases where the article is actually discussing the characters themselves. It's rather the other way around: the primary use of a name in the text is in the Latin alphabet, and any Chinese characters or other scripts are auxiliary. If you removed all Chinese characters entirely from the text of an article, it would still be complete. The Chinese characters are something "extra" for those who may have some familiarity with them. As such, a name like Beijing or Goguryeo or Sangju is just a name. If an article mentions the way that name can be written in Chinese characters (optional), the purpose is to show how that particular name is written with Chinese characters, no more, no less. There's no requirement to elucidate anything else about the characters themselves, such as how they are pronounced in any given language or what they mean individually. This information may sometimes be relevant, but there's no reason why it should be included as a general rule. It seems to me that what's really at stake here is whether certain historical entities should be considered Chinese or Korean. Romanization is a bit of a red herring. --Reuben 05:22, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I think the section's title is "Romanization of Chinese characters", so I will stick to the title, which is the subject being discussed. You are discussing what happens if Chinese characters are gone. As I said, if no Chinese character, then the problem being discussed is gone. Let's assume we are discussing those en.wikipedia articles which need Chinese characters. This is the postulate so we enter this topic of "Romanization of Chinese characters". Based on this assumption, I don't think there is a good rule to determine which romanization form could be used on the Chinese characters concerned.--Jiejunkong 06:06, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
No, you didn't quite understand me. I'm saying that in an article written in English, names written in the Latin alphabet are primary, and Chinese characters are something optional and supplementary. You seem to want it to be the other way around, with Chinese characters as primary and a system of Romanization to explain them. That's out of place on the English-language Wikipedia. --Reuben 18:57, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
No, you don't get it. You are a Korean, this doesn't mean original writings like 丸都 should be translated into Hwando (the Korean romanization) but not Wandu (the Chinese Pinyin romanization). Maybe you don't know that all east Asia continent's history records before the 15th century were written in classical Chinese (which is similar to Latin in the Western world). No romanization exists for those ancient names until modern time. (1) If you are saying that there is only one consistent romanization for original history writings like 丸都, wrong, because there are at least two, Wandu in Pinyin and Hwando used by people prefer Korean language. (2) If you are saying that one of Chinese or Korean romanization is the only form for 丸都, wrong again, because there is no such wikipedia rule.--Jiejunkong 03:14, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
No, I'm not saying (1) or (2). I don't think you understood what I wrote at all. I'm saying that Wikipedia should use whatever names are most commonly used in English-language sources. We don't need to choose Romanizations, we should just use whatever's in use already in English. I'm not Korean, not sure where you got that idea. --Reuben 04:33, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
See below for my reply to the definition of "most commonly used" for some Asian historical terms, which are not common in the English speaking world. There are rules needed. For example, do you define UNESCO's English term as the most commonly used? or do you depend on wikipedian's consensus? It is unclear what you meant by "most commonly used".--Jiejunkong 20:03, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
As to your last two sentences, if you are interested in classifying a historical entity as Korean or Chinese. Welcome to the east Asia history study. Before Hangul was invented in the 15th century, all history records in the northeastern Asia continent were written in Chinese characters, in particular, classical Chinese language (e.g., Korean's canonical history record "Samguk Sagi", see the PDF copy of Seoul National University's Kyujanggak Archives, e.g., Volume 16). Following these canonical history records, it is believed Silla and Baekje are proto-Korean, while Goguryeo is proto-Korean and proto-Manchu. Unfortunately, modern Koreans typically cannot read Chinese, and they copy conclusions from Westerners, who typically cannot read Chinese at all. It's a messy situation. Your POV depends on which source you believe it is the most reliable and appropriate published source. In this case, I choose Samguk Sagi, Twenty-four Histories and Zizhi Tongjian, which are more reliable and appropriate published than modern people's research. (Wikipedia:Reliable sources respect the most reliable and appropriate published sources).--Jiejunkong 06:17, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, the rule is simple. We don't need to rename things according to original historiography. Instead, just call historical entities whatever they are most commonly called in English-language sources. The use of Chinese characters in historical documents is totally irrelevant. --Reuben 18:57, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Your conclusion is fine with me, but will be ruled as invalid by English speakers. For an example, 丸都 is the original historiagraphy written in Samguk Sagi, which is the canonical history record of Goryeo. So according to your conclusion, we should write 丸都 in en.wikipedia, but obviously English speakers won't accept your conclusion. You still have the romanization problem unsolved.--Jiejunkong 03:20, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
Did you read what I wrote at all? In particular, where I said "whatever they are most commonly called in English-language sources?" I'm not sure where you go the idea that I want to use Chinese characters in the English-language text. That's very nearly the opposite of what I actually wrote. --Reuben 04:33, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
Unfortunately, neither romanization form of 丸都 (neither Wandu nor Hwando) is common in the English speaking world. There are a few citings of either form, but you cannot say there is significant difference between 6 citings of one form and 5 citings of another. The so-called "most commonly called in English-language sources" may lack consensus in the term "most". Clearly, terms like "Tokyo", "Shanghai" are the most commonly called names; but terms like Dingan Kingdom (in particular history terms covering the border area of more than two different modern countries speaking more than two different modern languages), are not. You still need to define what you meant by "most commonly used", for example, Wandu is used as the romanization form of 丸都 by UNESCO's official naming. Is this counted as "most commonly used"? or should we do a consensus poll whenever a dispute happens.--Jiejunkong 20:03, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
If they're both used about equally often, then we can mention both. There's nothing wrong with that. If one spelling or version is used predominantly in English, then we use that one. It makes no difference whether something was originally written in classical Chinese. --Reuben 21:04, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
Basically I am not against what you said about choosing romanization forms according to their common usage. For example, since "Wandu" and "Hwando" are used about equally often for the original writing 丸都 in Samguk Sagi, I did use "Wandu/Hwando" to mention both in the article Goguryeo. But some users were upset and turned this parallelized choice of romanization forms into an editing war (they want to use Hwando only even if UNESCO has adopted Wandu as the romanization form). In order to avoid such editing chaos, I created this section to discuss the issue. I cherish the hope that a wiki-rule, at least a wiki-guideline, can be made from the discussion. As you know, what has been said here by regular users like you and me means nothing if it is archived without any discussion result. The editing chaos will persist for those east Asian terms without common English usage.--Jiejunkong 04:22, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
OK; sorry, but the rule you initially proposed doesn't make sense to me. There's simply no need to have a rule that Pinyin should be included for everything that was originally written in classical Chinese before a certain date. In fact, we do already have a policy, which is to follow existing common usage in English. I don't dispute that that is sometimes chaotic, but it's the rule that makes sense here. As for entities that have no existing English-language usage at all, that raises questions of notability and original research. As for the particular case of Wandu or Hwandu, I'm simply not familiar with what it's usually called in English, so I don't have an opinion. The Unesco document seems to be referring to the locations of the archaeological sites, i.e. modern Chinese names because they are in China. I think the usage in works of history would be more relevant here. And again, I haven't looked so I don't know how they refer to the place. --Reuben 05:20, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

It should be noted that I first intended this to be a minor fix, because the Goguryeo article consistently uses the Korean romanization for historic Goguryeo entities. I didn't expect someone to make such a big deal out of it. The majority of reliable English publications, including Encyclopedia Britannica, Encarta and Columbia Encyclopedia, consider Goguryeo as Korean history and consistently use the Korean romanization for historic Goguryeo entities. Cydevil38 01:20, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Another point - within the Goguryeo article, Chinese romanization is consistently used for Chinese entities such as the Lelang commandery, even if they were located in present-day Korea. Cydevil38 01:26, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

First, don't make up non-existing consensus, or you need to show us the consensus vote page. Second, don't make up history. I won't call the following description a consensus, but it is a historical fact checking according to canonical history records. (1) The 10th century is the important moment which divides the line amongst the modern ethnic groups Chinese and Korean in northeastern Asia continent. Those who stayed in Goryeo, i.e., Korean Peninsula, at the end of the 10th century became ancestors of modern Korean. Those who stayed to the north of Korean Peninsula at the end of the 10th century became ancestors of modern Manchu Chinese, Daur Chinese and Han Chinese. (2) Therefore, those Goguryeo people living at the 7th century had similar chance to create descendants of the 10th century, either in Korean Peninsula or not. Later the descendants of these descendants became modern Korean or Chinese, respectively. Thus you can claim that Goguryeo, which was destroyed by Silla and Tang Dynasty at the 7th century, is a proto-Korean and proto-Manchu state. You can also claim that Balhae, which was destroyed by Khitan at the 10th century, is a proto-Manchu and proto-Korean state. But it is improper to claim that Goguryeo is Korean or Balhae is Manchu-Chinese. The history is not like that. It has nothing to do with modern governments' and nationalists' claims.--Jiejunkong 04:33, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Wrong direction translation requests

There are a few pending requests for translation in the "wrong" direction. Namely, the requester is asking for a foreign language article to be translated into English when they presumably mean they want the English article to be translated into the foreign language (such as ms:Star Trek (the Malay language article) to en:Star Trek). Is there a standard procedure for dealing with such requests? --Metropolitan90 03:57, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Sumerian language

In the "translate from German" section I find a reference to Wikipedia:Translation/Sumerian language that comes up as a nonexistent page (red link). I'm puzzled how that might happen. It seems like a very plausible translation request (the German version of that article has much more depth than the English one). Paul Koning 21:52, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

It looks to me as if someone tried to simply add a line to the list of translation requests without creating the translation template properly. Take a look at the box and the button just above the "Latest translation requests" section.
If you think the Sumerian language article should be translated, by all means create the proper request for it. If a potential translator agrees with you, the article could well be translated!
Regards, Scbarry (talk) 04:48, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Can someone please add Thorkild Grosbøll?

I'd like to read a translation of da:Thorkild_Grosbøll, but as an IP I can't. Thanks -85.210.32.112 01:04, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

English translation for Norwegian article on Basim Ghozlan

It is possible to get the short Norwegian article for Basim Ghozlan translated into English for Basim Ghozlan please? Robert C Prenic 07:44, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Talk:BDSM/Translation

I'm the main author of the featured :de article BDSM.
Following the discussion related to the structural problems in this field I continued the translation of the article under Talk:BDSM/Translation. The translation was discussed on the en talk page and started about a year ago. Later it stalled. Some parts are already included in the main en article (e.g. textfragments, movies, most of the images). I guess it was simply to much for 2 persons...

I'm sure that the translation will help to organize this field of topics and might help to evaluate the the importace of some "fan-topics" which are appearing more frequently during the last months. Being a member of :de Project Sexology and sexuality (Redaktion Sexualität) and :de admin I only know to well how difficult it can be to sort out the possible nonsense appearing on this topic.

The :de version of the article was designed in part closely following the :en articles discussion on relevance and structure and therefore has solved 90% of the topics on the article's talk page and archive. While its legal chapters are basically eurocentristic (UK, Austria, Switzerland and Germany) it would take only minor efforts to include US backgrounds once it is translated. The historical and most of the other chapters (about 90%) are "internationalized". Both articles' content is highly interchangeable. While the German one features scientific resources the English one has the Chance to structure a rich field of surrounding articles.

BDSM has been rated as high-importance on the importance scale. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nemissimo (talk • contribs) 08:10, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

We started translating about a year ago and stopped because progress slowed down.

A former request for translation was unsuccessful and later somehow deleted, I still haven't found out by whom or why. Due to job reasons I didn't have the time and resources to continue alone.

I would like to ask you guys if any of you are interested in giving a hand. ;-) I can make my way in English, but as soon as the result needs to be raised to an quasi-scientific level I definitely need native speakers helping to proofread and raise the languege level. Is anyone interested in cooperating in this project? I guess this could be good fun and there is a realistic chance to improve the entire field related to this article. Kind Regards. --Nemissimo 06:29, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

I've just finished the translation. It would be great if someone could start proofreading it. After the proofreading I will integrate the minor aspects from the old article whitch are not already included and move it.--Nemissimo 16:02, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Translation & Citations

Ive noticed some wikipedias in other languages are more relaxed about citations in general. For instance, the German wikipedia, which I am not a contributor to, requires hardly any in-text citations. When the pages are translated into Englsih, they are just blocks of text with no sources, and then the articles all get labeled as no citations. Is there some sort of consensus on how to deal with this? It seems like people translating pages into English should cite sources, at least with some effort, even if the sources are in other languages. I dont mean to pick on the german-language wikipedia becuase Im sure this happens with lots of others too.--DerRichter (talk) 22:31, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Translator activity

I've noticed that this place is dead as a doornail. Is there any assistance to be offered? I've seen more movement in a graveyard.--THE FOUNDERS INTENT TALK 00:28, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

IPs can't make translation requests

It appears that anonymous users cannot make a translation request using the official procedure, due to page creation restrictions.

So I'll just dump my comment here: I came across the article Promarship using the "Random Article" feature. It appears to be in French(?), despite being on en.wikipedia.org. It may just be a vanity page, but not knowing French, I can't make that determination myself. -- 16:12, 6 December 2007 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.104.112.53 (talk • contribs) 2007-12-06T11:12:46

It's an advert for the company listing "our services", "our partners" and "join us" with contact details. Saint|swithin 17:25, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

audio

Can someone point me to the right place to ask for a volunteer (native French speaker) to record an .ogg audio file of (the pronunciation of) "Moët et Chandon" for the article of the same name? - Nunh-huh 08:15, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Proposal - Translation helpdesk

After spending some time working on translation requests in this section I've noticed that there does not seem to be a general place for people to go for help with translations, specifically doubts on how to translate a particular word or phrase or other questions related to the mechanics of translating a document.

There is a section in each individual translation request for this but I suspect very few people ever see the questions, unless you go trolling through every request there is no way to know if someone is asking for help.

I was thinking of something akin to the helpdesks such as: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language‎; but located here in the translation area where people can go for help, for translations in any language. Thoughts? Vrac (talk) 21:29, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Very good idea! Where would be the best place to start such a place? I think, it would also make more sense, if there are separate pages for every language. So, if one understands German for example, one directly visits the page for German translation questions and doesn't have to look through hundreds of entries to find the German ones. — Tirkfltalk 08:13, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
I was thinking a subproject of wikipedia/translation, then putting links to it in the request templates and in the other translation project pages. It doesn't look like there is too much interest though, unless there is a better place to put this discussion, I'm not sure how many people watch this page. I put it here and in the French and German talk pages. Vrac (talk) 02:55, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

German translation page re-filing

Hello German Translators -

It seemed to me that the German translation page was getting a bit top-heavy, with a lot of un-filed translations at the top and thinning categories at the bottom. I took the opportunity of re-filing the requests that were near the top into the categories. The first of the new year, when there was little activity, seemed to be a good time to do it.

I left a small note there to let others know about it. It occurred to me later that I possibly should have asked for consensus here first. If anyone is unhappy with the change, please let me know and the changes can be reverted.

Happy New Year to all! Scbarry (talk) 22:33, 1 January 2008 (UTC)


Hello again, German Translators -

I wanted to add that I think it's great to keep adding new requests at the top of the page (i.e. unfiled). It's easy to see what's new then. But it was just getting a bit too much.

I also went through all the previous months' templates in the archives (since Nov 2006, when the new system was started) and picked out the German articles that had not yet been completed. I've added these to the German translation page, so we can track their progress, too. That should give us all more fun things to play with, and hopefully nothing will fall through the cracks.

Have fun! Scbarry (talk) 01:47, 4 January 2008 (UTC)


Hello German Translators -

One drawback that the current system has is that anyone can create a translation request and not record it on the Translations pages, so no one but the requestor will ever know it's there. After I went through the archives, I decided to look at all the German requests. (This is not hard to find out. Just click on "more info" for any request and see what categories it is in, at the bottom of the page. Then click on the category to find other pages in the same category.)

I found quite a few more requests to add to the German translation page, about 87 of them. I don't know whether I can add them all to the German translation page and not have problems with transclusion, but I'll try.

I'd like to suggest that we translators get very busy and try to clean up the backlog or else no one else is going to be able to request any translations for a while! I hate to let valid requests fall on the floor, but people should still be able to request new articles.

Does anyone know if Jmfayard is still active on Wikipedia? The last edit I see from his is at the beginning of last February, and around mid-March for the French Wiki. He's the one who really knows how the translations system works.

Have fun! Scbarry (talk) 23:52, 4 January 2008 (UTC)


Hello again -

OK, I have around 70 more old translation requests to fit on the German translations page. Any help in getting some of the existing entries finished up would be greatly appreciated. Right now, the very bottom of the page is incorrect because of transclusion problems. There are some articles that just need proofreading, so we should be able to make a little more space.

Have fun! Scbarry (talk) 02:36, 5 January 2008 (UTC)


I thought I'd mention, in case anyone wants to go through this exercise in the future, that there seem to be (at least) two groups of requests among those I found. One group consists of requests that were created and not put on either the main translation page or the German page, and thus were never seen by the translaters. The other group seems to consist of requests which were completed to some degree or another and (apparently??) deleted without being set "Complete" (or ever being put on the main translation page, so were not included in the archives there). I'm assuming that they were not proofread, so I'm trying to proofread them and then set them Complete.

I'd appreciate any help from others in translating and proofreading these, so everything fits on the main German page again. I don't feel right being the proofreader of my own translations, so the articles I translate can't be removed from the German page until someone else proofreads them.

Have fun! Scbarry (talk) 16:03, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Title of a Translated work

I Notice the GFDL says "Use in the Title Page (and on the covers, if any) a title distinct from that of the Document, and from those of previous versions (which should, if there were any, be listed in the History section of the Document). You may use the same title as a previous version if the original publisher of that version gives permission" If I translate a page which would have the same title in the other language is it legitimate to keep the same title.168.215.250.91 (talk) 04:59, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Since WikiPedia's content is free of copyright (it is released to the public), there should be no problem with translating content (including the title, and even if it's the same title). According to the GFDL guidelines the translation info phrase has to be put on the (bottom of the) page. See also:
I hope that helps a little bit. If things are not clearer, feel free to ask again! — Tirkfltalk 08:51, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
"According to the GFDL guidelines the translation info phrase has to be put on the (bottom of the) page." Where is this exactly? I don't see it. I also see that the History page must be duplicated. Does that apply to wikipedia, because it seems impossible? Wikipedia is copyrighted and is licensed to be used under a license with certian parameters. These don't seem Condusive to Translation on Wikipedia.Commment (talk) 14:36, 31 January 2008 (UTC)


It seems to me a really semantic question, if it is incompatible with GFDL to give the translation the same title as the source page (actually it is NOT the same title, because it is in another language).
The translation info phrase can be found on the translation subpage (for example see "stage 4" of Wikipedia:Translation/Hesselberg#Instructions). See also:Wikipedia_talk:Translation#Copyrights
I am no jurist, but if a work is released to the public domain, is it still be copyright protected? – Tirkfltalk 15:43, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
Well the work I was talking about's title cannot be translated as it is the name of a person. Regarding your last question Wikipedia is NOT in the public domain. It is copyrighted and licensed under the GFDL license. The terms for that license can be found [here].

Translation of a Croatian website for informational source of Sopje article

I came across a very short stub and decided to do some research. I found a fair bit of information, but the most information to be found was on the website for the Municipality of [Sopje] in Croatia. The problem is that they do not have an English version and the online translator I found did a very poor job of translating it. I do not know where to suggest translation of a webpage for use as information. The website is http://sopje.net.

-JasonSpradlin82 (talk) 23:52, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

translation and verifiability

If an article is translated from another article in foreign language and books in foreign country, what should we do if someone requests an additional source while these sources are not affordable to us ? Jtm71 (talk) 22:16, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Willi Baumeister

Hi, I'm representing the Baumeister Archive in Stuttgart. Could you please tell me whether it's possible (=allowed) to include a (more or less) 1:1 translation of the German Wikipedia information about this artist into the English WP. Thank you Docbernd (talk) 13:03, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that is what we are doing here all the time. You only have to reference the original article. Simply request a translation, then follow the instructions. Kind regards, — Tirk·fl  “…”  13:18, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, Docbernd (talk) 14:05, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi again. Well, I have just read the WP pages you mentioned, and my question now is: does it really have to be so, ehm, complicated? I already have the complete translation lying in front of me. So why not simply include it by overwriting the few existing sentences? Docbernd (talk) 12:57, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Don't be put off by the procedure. Although it seems "complicated" it is very well thought-out. Simply replace the article with your translation, I will do the rest for you (translation request, etc.) — Tirk·fl  “…”  13:42, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
It took a while but now it's done. I replaced the few lines of the "old" content by the new translation from the German WP. I'm sure that there is still some work to do. Thank you, Tirkfl, for your help. Docbernd (talk) 06:33, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Translation

Given all the translation activity on Wikipedia, you may want to create a Wikipedia:WikiProject Translation to over see all these translation activities. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Council for details. GregManninLB (talk) 14:14, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

User Template typo

Does anybody know, how to modify this template:

German
-
English		This user is a translator from German to English on Wikipedia:Translation.

The word "german" should be capitalised.

Kind regards — Tirk·fl  “…”  12:33, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

With a capital G :-)▪◦▪≡SiREX≡Talk 08:21, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Oh, hmm. Simple as that... Thanks for the info and for changing my userbox too! — Tirk·fl  “…” 13:33, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Machine translation of Sources: (automatic translation)

Many of the sources on articles about foreign matters (e.g. Biographies) inevitably rely on original language articles. Recently (15 May 2008) Google Translate added 10 new languages - including Polish. In order to help English speaking readers, I have tried linking some Polish language sources to Google Translate which presents a Machine translation of the web page with the ability to view the original source or even continue browsing the translated site. The machine translation is only an aid but makes a page broadly intelligible to a foreigner. Is this method of linking directly to the automatic translation an acceptable practice for Wikipedia? e.g.

Is there a convention for indicating a "machine translation" or can I propose my method, as shown in the above example, of following the link with: (automatic translation)

Try browsing the Polish Wikipedia in English (automatic translation) Tom Szczepanik (talk) 02:17, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Translation#What_to_remember_when_translating KellenT 08:52, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Translation to existing English pages

What's with all the requests to translate to English--when the English articles already exist? For example, there's a request to translate the article on Boris III of Bulgaria into English--yet the article has existed in English since 2002. —Largo Plazo (talk) 16:06, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

It's because there may be some info on the foreign language article that hasn't been translated into English yet. Singularity 06:09, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
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