Pushing MediaWiki Internationalization

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


"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%.


● 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.


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


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!


Empty

Code

Messaging

Local

Technical background (short!)


Empty

Code

Messaging

Local

twn

Technical background (short!)

Replication of translated MediaWiki messages


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


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)→


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)


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!

Pushing MediaWiki Internationalization

Technology

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