Tim Bartel Wikimania 2010Wikimania 2010

Pushing MediaWikiInternationalization

Insights into MediaWiki i18n at a large multi-language service provider

Tim Bartel Wikimania 2010

● 130,000+ wikis in 220+ languages

● 2,000,000+ user accounts

● Top 80 Website

● ~33 mm unique users per month

● 2/3 international

● 250+ MediaWiki extensions

● Free license

Tim Bartel Wikimania 2010

"Wikia was founded by Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley with a mission to enable

communities to create, share and discover content on any topic in any language.”

“Mission statement” from our About Wikia page

English is the native language of only ~30% of the Internet's population. Let's not alienate the other 70%.

Tim Bartel Wikimania 2010

● Internationalization = i18n / Localization = L10n

● Adapting our software to different languages and regional differences

● Language

● Word order

● Encoding

● Different formatting/conventions (e.g. dates, sort order)

● Text processing (e.g. capitalization)

● Writing direction

● Mostly “simple” translations, but:

● Many L10n issues require more profoundchanges than simple text translations.

Tim Bartel Wikimania 2010

Problems

● More wikis, users, extensions, languages

● How should the rollout be handled?

– Activate globally(messages will show up in English)

– Activate on a per language base(per request/if i18n is ready)

● Organizational overheaddoes not scale

● Best solution: User based

Tim Bartel Wikimania 2010

translatewiki.net (twn)

● Localization community for MediaWiki and otheropen-source projects

● Becoming more and more a “standard” way for i18n

Why is twn an interesting partner?

● Active translation community

● Languages Wikia's team never even heard of

● Users striving for perfection

● Statistics! With colored bars!

Tim Bartel Wikimania 2010

Empty

Code

Messaging

Local

Technical background (short!)

Tim Bartel Wikimania 2010

Empty

Code

Messaging

Local

twn

Technical background (short!)

Replication of translated MediaWiki messages

Tim Bartel Wikimania 2010

Benefits

Shortcomings

Wikia translatewiki.net

● Messages won't go live instantly● Coordination needed between us/twn● More work for engineering

● Need to meet certain standards● Better documentation

● Matching with Messaging● twn guys may break our code

● Less organizational overhead● More translators● Pure number of translations● Bigger userbase/new opportunities● Quality of translations/additional QA● Gaining more insights into i18n

● Supporting the mission of twn● Learning for future co-operations● Having a good example/case study to show interested parties● Development by Wikia

● Deal with the fact that Wikia is a commercial company

● Reaction time to bug reports● Clash between volunteers and

paid people “doing their job”● …

● Wikia devs may break twn work

Tim Bartel Wikimania 2010

Results since start of cooperation

● Since Feb 2010 tens of thousands messages were translated (15,000+ during first weeks)

● 19+ languages have now more than 50% of all messages translated (before: ~8)

● 11+ languages have now 100% of all messages translated (before: 3)

● Lots of new translators (~15 ~60)→

Tim Bartel Wikimania 2010

Outlook (What can be done better?)

● LocalisationUpdate (explain)

● Instant replication of messages

● Translate more than MediaWikimessages only (e.g. Help pages)

● Better statistics

● Gain more insights

● Automate certain actions(e.g. activate extensions atWikia once it's fully translated)

Tim Bartel Wikimania 2010

What can you do?

● Join in as translator at translatewiki.net

● Become active inside Wikia's meta community

● Tell us if you spot any errors

● ...

Thanks!