Help in other languages

[steve]

I don't get thrown out of the German translation if I click on a link in the German text or in the German sidebar on that page. Maybe this happens only if there is no German translation available for a specific link? Or maybe they have a special trick to find out that you're working from an English system?

It's rather inconsistent. Some links throw me back to English even if there is a translation available, other links stay in the selected language. Some of the <a href=""> tags are translated and some are not.

[Gale Andrews]

Thanks, Edgar. I suppose Google Translate may be better with some languages than others. It's not too bad in French, I understand, but probably not a way forward.

Does this help us: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Translate? If translators are happier working with messages they cannot see the context of, perhaps it helps?

No, the opposite is the case. Translators are only happy if they can see the full context. In case of the Audacity GUI this is acceptable because it would be too much pain for the C/C++ developers to provide the full context for every string, but the reason why the translation of the Audacity homepage is in such a [#%$!] state is that it's pure pain for the translators to translate long sentences if they can't see the context.

Right, exactly what I would have thought. So when we write strings for the main web site we try not to break them up too much. But trying to "sell" translators the idea of working on the Wiki by explaining that you can see all the context still does not appeal to them. One said it was easier to see each string in its own box.

The Wikipedia translations seem to use automatic "tagging" to break translations into paragraphs, and they don't usually go finer than that.

I don't like how one of the prominent users of this extension http://userbase.kde.org/An_introduction_to_KDE boot you out of your chosen language when you click a link on a translated page, even though the link is translated. That doesn't happen on Wikipedia after using the Interlanguage links in the sidebar.

I don't get thrown out of the German translation if I click on a link in the German text or in the German sidebar on that page. Maybe this happens only if there is no German translation available for a specific link? Or maybe they have a special trick to find out that you're working from an English system?

Yes, I already checked there were German translations for the pages where I was booted back to English. But it's nice to know it does work in German.


Gale

[edgar-rft]

Gale: I don't like how An introduction to KDE boot you out of your chosen language when you click a link on a translated page.

Edgar-rft: I don't get thrown out of the German translation if I click on a link in the German text or in the German sidebar on that page.

Steve: It's rather inconsistent. Some links throw me back to English even if there is a translation available, other links stay in the selected language.

Gale: But it's nice to know it does work in German.

I'm still not sure, because there are two possible reasons for getting thrown back to an English page:

• The human translator may have forgotten to change the link from an English original page to the translated page. The links in the translated pages must be changed manually by the human translator, they don't get changed automatically.

• It may be an internal WikiMedia error, where an English original page is displayed because an existing translated page wasn't found.

Can anybody provide an example where a link points to a translated page, but an untranslated English original page appears instead?

- edgar

[steve]

It's rather inconsistent. Some links throw me back to English even if there is a translation available, other links stay in the selected language. Some of the <a href=""> tags are translated and some are not.

Can anybody provide an example where a link points to a translated page, but an untranslated English original page appears instead?

Here is an example of what I meant:

On the page: http://userbase.kde.org/An_introduction_to_KDE/fr
The link: "Qu'est-ce que KDE" goes to: http://userbase.kde.org/What_is_KDE (English), rather than http://userbase.kde.org/What_is_KDE/fr (French).

[edgar-rft]

The funny thing is that with ALL links on the French page there appear German pages here. This prooves that there must be some automatism that detects the language of my browser or my Linux system. For example in the Firefox (Iceweasel) Preferences "Contents" tab there is a "Preferred Langauge" setting. Stupidly my Iceweasel refuses to accept anything other than "de-de" as my preferred language, so I can't test what happens if I switch to "en".

[edgar-rft]

I finally have managed to switch the Iceweasel browser to "en" as my preferred language, and now I'm getting English pages when I click on the links on the French page. Obviously WikiMedia can read my "preferred language" browser settings and then automatically translates the links to the pages in my "preferred language". This could be useful the Audacity manual.

What I still find a bit strange is that the An introduction to KDE front page always first appears in English with a German navigation bar, but the text of the page only appears in German after I have clicked on the "German" translation link at the top of the page. But if I click on one of the links in the English text of the page I get directed to a German page.

All in all this appears to me as a half-baken solution, that's still not finished.

[Gale Andrews]

What I still find a bit strange is that the An introduction to KDE front page always first appears in English with a German navigation bar, but the text of the page only appears in German after I have clicked on the "German" translation link at the top of the page. But if I click on one of the links in the English text of the page I get directed to a German page.

All in all this appears to me as a half-baken solution, that's still not finished.

I see the same. After setting Firefox 12 to French and going to http://userbase.kde.org/What_is_KDE, only "Other languages" ("Autres langues") in the languages bar and the Sidebar is in French. The Languages bar has "anglais" selected (black), yet if I click a link further down that page without changing from "anglais", the link (which has a URL starting with "Special:MyLanguage") goes to the French page and the selected language becomes "français".

As a caution, changing the IE9 language to French (even solely French) has no effect whatsoever, even after removing cookies and checking in http://validator.w3.org/i18n-checker/ that the Accept-Language header being sent is French. But then this doesn't make the audacity.SF.net site appear in French either, which it does in Firefox once cookies are cleared and the Accept-Language is French. So you can't blame the Translate extension for the IE problem, except that it doesn't set a language cookie, meaning that translations will never work on their own if the Accept-Language header doesn't work.

I'll ask Buanzo his opinion about this thread, but unless Audacity translators are prepared to use whatever the solution is, it seems rather wasted effort.



Gale

[waxcylinder]

BUMP

I do not propose to transfer this to Wiki>PFR

Do we need to retain this thread somewhere?

Peter.

[Gale Andrews]

BUMP

I do not propose to transfer this to Wiki>PFR

Do we need to retain this thread somewhere?

I don't think there is much in this thread that can be realised in the near future.

It doesn't really fit anywhere on the main Forum, so I would suggest either storing it in Bug Triage, or if Steve feels like it, create a new Wiki Proposal page summarising the findings in this topic instead.



Gale

[waxcylinder]

Moved to the bug triage section.

@Steve: looks like Gale has passed the baton on to you if you feel like running with it

Peter