Online Manual:Translation Portal

This is the project page for translators of the SMF Wiki. Translators can check in here to find out what they can do. If you have any questions about this information, or suggestions for improving this page, please discuss in the Doc Helpers Board.

Languages to Translate
Below is a list of the 40 languages which SMF has been translated into. The links show the percentage of the Wiki translation completed in the Translation Extension for each language. This is the place to check to see what still needs to be translated (ignore the top two Mediawiki entries as they are for the Wiki interface). If the English text of these pages is modified, translations may need to be updated, so also please keep checking for updates from the Documentation Team in the Documentation Help board regarding changes to these pages. If the language you are interested in translating is not in the following list please notify the Doc Team by posting in the Documentation Help board.

How to Start Translating
These translations are being done using a wiki extension called the Translate Extension, provided by the translatewiki team. You can start translating pages by clicking on the page title in the statistics page for your language as listed above. If you want to review pages that have already been fully translated, untick the box next to Suppress completely translated message groups, which can be found at the top of the statistics page - then click on the button Show Statistics.

A list of the translatable pages can also be found at Special:PageTranslation. If you have permission to translate, you will see on these pages a link titled Translate this page above the content of the page. This is another way of accessing the Translate Extension.

Using the Translate Extension

 * 1) Make sure that the language you want to translate to is selected in the top right-hand corner. If it isn't, just click on that section and then search for your language.
 * 2) At the top of the page, you can select the page that you want to translate. If you click on All (next to Message Group), you will see a list of all the pages that are available in the Translate Extension.
 * 3) You can filter what is shown on the page by clicking on the links at the top of the page:
 * 4) *All - this shows all the translation units, including ones that have already been translated, as well as untranslated and outdated units.
 * 5) *Untranslated - Only the untranslated units will be shown.
 * 6) *Outdated - These units have been translated, but they now need updating.
 * 7) *Translated - Only translated units will be shown.
 * 8) At the bottom of the page, you can change the display of the Translate Extension:
 * 9) *List - Each translation unit is displayed in just one line. To see the full text of a unit, just click on it.
 * 10) *Page - This displays the full text of each translation unit.
 * 11) *Review - Select this in order to review and confirm each translated unit.
 * 12) Choose a unit to translate. Just click on a particular unit and enter the translation in the box below the source English text. When you have completed the translation of a unit (message), click on Save translation. If a translation already exists, you can make alterations by clicking on the edit icon to the right of each translation unit.

IMPORTANT:


 * When translating, you must always include all the Wiki code. For example, if you see ==Profile Information==, then make sure you include all the equal signs (==) as these indicate that it is a heading. For further information about wiki code, take a look at the Wikipedia Cheatsheet.


 * As you're translating a unit, please take note of any warning message above the input box. The Translate Extension may have found some inconsistencies in your translation compared to the English source version. In this case you must update the translation and save the changes.

Translating Links
The standard method for creating Wikilinks doesn't work very well in the Translation Extension, so the llink template method is used instead.


 * Linking to another wiki page:

English version:

Esperanto version:

"Main menu" is the name of the original English version of the page. You should never translate this as the llink template will automatically redirect users to the translated version. You should however translate the part after text=. In the example, the Esperanto translation "ĉefa menuo" has been entered.


 * Linking to a certain section of another wiki page:

English version:

Dutch version:

Again, don't translate the English name of the original page ("Profile" in this case). But do translate the words after text=, as these are the words that will appear in the link on the page. The anchor= marks the part of the Profile page that the link will lead to. The target of anchor= has to be changed in order to work correctly on the translated page. For example, in the case of the Dutch translation it has to be changed to anchor=Persoonlijke_berichten. You can discover what to enter after anchor= by going to the translated version of the page (in this case, Profile), then click on the the translated title of Personal Messaging in the Table of Contents. You will then see the required text in the address bar of your browser, the part after the hash sign (#). For example, in the case of the Dutch version:

http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Profile/nl#Persoonlijke_berichten

Note that for languages which use certain special characters, the text after the above hash sign might have been automatically converted into a compatible format, which might seem a little confusing at first. For example, in the case of Esperanto, the above link appears as ...#Privataj_mesa.C4.9Doj rather than ...#Privataj_mesaĝoj. Make sure that you use the converted form.

Translating Templates
The instructions for translating a template should be found on the template itself. For example, take a look at Template:Version_specific (scroll down to the section "How to translate this template"). Be careful to follow the notes accurately and translate only the necessary parts. Don't alter any code or other text in the template because that will break it.

A list of the templates ready for translation can be found in the Category:Translatable templates

Why Templates and How to Work with Them
In the case of the Version Specific template it is used to create the coloured boxes that highlight version specific features. These boxes require quite a lot of code, so instead of pasting all this code into every page where it is needed, a template is used instead. This particular template is used on a page by adding:

In the above make sure that you translate only the part marked "Translate the text here". Leave everything else as it is and check that the final brackets are included after your translation because they close the box.

For further information about templates, please see the Wikimedia Quick Guide to Templates.