Proposal:Add Translate extension to Wiki
| Add Translate extension to Wiki | |
|---|---|
| Proposal status: | Approved (active) |
| Proposed by: | Lectrician1 |
| Draft started: | 2022-03-27 |
| RFC start: | 2022-03-28 |
| Vote start: | 2022-06-01 |
| Vote end: | 2022-06-15 |
This is a formal proposal seeking community consensus to add the Translate extension to the OpenStreetMap Wiki.
The Translate extension provides a translation user interface, semi-automatic translation, translation progress, and other features that significantly improve the process of translating pages compared to the current translation system.
It is a stable and popular extension used on multi-language wikis like translatewiki.net, meta.wikimedia.org, mediawiki.org, and wikidata.org.
Usage of this extension for page translation will not be mandatory over the current system, but rather act as an additional option for translators to use.
Changes and clarifications since the previous proposal
- The Visual Editor can now be used to edit translatable pages
- Pages translated using the Translated extension do not have to be 1:1 translations. In fact, translations can add different content if they want to.
- There is a new user group that called Translation administrators that will have the exclusive right of enabling and marking a page for translation
- Users can make a page translatable without requiring inserting
<translate></translate>tags by using Special:PagePreparation which inserts them automatically - Addition of the extension will not be determined by 75% approval or greater and instead consensus
Translation system comparison
Here is a comparison between the various actions involved and features of both translation systems.
Translation page creation
Current system
Translators create a page of the same name but with the translated language's code as the preceding namespace identifier.
For example, the Spanish version of the page for Tag:highway=footway is located at ES:Tag:highway=footway.
Translate extension
- A user selects a source page of any language (not just English) that all translations will be based on. The user prepares the page for translation by going to Special:PagePreparation.
- Translate administrators enable translation by clicking "Mark for translation", review the translation units that will be created, and click "Mark this version for translation".
The extension then automatically adds unit markers (<!-- T:1 -->) that split up long pieces of text between <translate></translate> tags into smaller translation messages.
Translated pages will be located at a subpage of the source page. For example, the Spanish translation of Proposal process would be located at Proposal process/es.
Translating
Current system
Translators copy or compare the content of the original page to the translated page they are working on and translate as much or little content in the language they are writing in.
Translate extension
Users click "Translate this page" at the top of the page and use the translation UI to translate. Translators may proceed to translate the text of individual messages. It is expected that translations match the source text in meaning. However, if translators want to add custom language content, they are allowed to do so. It is recommended that this differentiation in content is documented so that other translators do not overwrite it.
If the translation of a page is not complete, the untranslated content will show the content of the source language page. For example, if a Spanish translation of an English page is only translated partially, both the translated and untranslated English will be displayed on the Spanish page.
Current system
The {{Languages}} template is added to the source and translated pages.
Translate extension
The <languages/> tag is added to only to the source page. It will automatically show up in all translations. This navigation box also provides colored boxes to indicate what percentage the translation is complete.
Translating the article title
Current system
A redirect from the main namespace name of the translate page to the translated page name must be created and the page translated on the translated page title page.
For example ES:Proposal process must redirect to ES:Procedimiento de propuesta where the actual translation is.
Translate extension
Users simply translate the title using the translation UI and the translated title is shown on the translated page.
Changing the source page
Both translation systems allow you to change the source page as-normal using either the Wikitext editor or the Visual Editor.
Updating translations
Current system
If translators want to update a change on the English page to a translated page, they must observe that the change took place to begin with by having the page on their watchlist, and the edit and compare the change on the original and translated page and translate. Because of the manual actions required to do this, many translated pages are not kept up-to-date with the pages their translations were originally based on.
Translate extension
When someone makes a change to the source page, users must mark the page for translation by clicking "Mark this page for translation" and review the changes to make sure that the translation units will be correct.
When marked, the changes are "pushed" to the translated pages and those pages and their changed or new messages now indicate that they need to be updated both on the page itself and the translation UI.
Reviewing translations
Current system
If translators want to review if the translations on a page are accurate, they must manually compare the pages.
Translate extension
The translate extension provides a "review" feature that allows users to mark if a translation message is accurate and has been reviewed. The reviewed button acts as a ticker that increases every time someone reviews a message. Thus, one can determine how accurate a translation based on how many times it has been reviewed.
The Translate extension also offers "Workflows" to manage the translation state of a page. For example, these states include "translating", "proofreading", and "complete".
Adding documentation about translations
Current system
The current system provides no way of adding documentation about translations other than maybe inline comments.
Translate extension
The Translate extension has a dedicated feature for adding documentation about translations to translate messages. This helps other translators know why or how specific translations were made. For example, warning about false friends where word in some language is the same as in English, but with different meaning.
Translating templates
Current system
Templates can be translated in a variety of ways:
- Templates can be translated like normal pages where users must copy the source code and translate all parts of it on a different page. Examples: {{Denominations}}, {{Fuel types}}, {{Map Features:Cuisine (type of food)}}, {{Map Features:route}}, Simple 3D Buildings/Demo areas
- Templates can be translated by creating parameters for each of the translated strings in a template that translated pages input their translations into. Example
- Templates can be translated using Langswitch.
Translations of templates can be a nightmare to manage and transclude and can trigger a VisualEditor bug that corrupts the page.
Translation extension
Users setup a template for translation just like they would with a normal page by surrounding the text that needs to be translated with <translate></translate> tags. This means that if a user wants to translate the template, they do not have to know or go through Wikitext like they would with the current system.
Here is an example of a template translated with the Translate extension. Notice how only the source code that needs to be translated is wrapped with translate tags. So when translating, users only need to translate that text. Users can also use the TNT template to easily setup translation of template parameters.
Moving a translated page
Current system
Users must move the main page and every single one of the translation namespace pages and optionally rename them and establish new redirects.
Translate extension
All translated pages and their talk pages are automatically moved with the source language page when conducting a standard page move.
Features the Translate extension offers the current system does not
Translation suggestions
The Translate extension can recognize text you are translating that has already been translated or near-translated on the wiki. You can click on these suggestions to paste them into the translation box. This can greatly increase translation speed.
Language-aware translation transclusion
Translated pages can be transcluded on other pages which means that if there is a translation available in the language the user is using, the translation will appear.
Translation aggregate groups
Users can aggregate translatable pages and their messages to translate them together and get statistics on them.
For example, there is an aggregate group for the priority messages of the Wikimedia Community Wishlist Survey.
All high-priority pages like Wiki documentation pages and Main Page could be aggregated together to let translators know they need to keep all of them up to date.
Translation statistics
The extension offers many pages that show translation statistics of languages on the wiki and even graphical reports.
Offline translation
Users can translate pages offline using external software and then import them into the wiki.
Other current translation systems
LangSwitch
Example: iD/Shortcuts
Experimental and rarely used. A single source page contains all the translations, hurting page load times and counting against the template expansion limit.
Interface messages
Example: {{Taginfo2}}
- Pages load fastest using this approach.
- Only administrators can edit interface messages in the MediaWiki namespace, so this approach is only useful for extremely popular templates.
- Eventually, if the MediaWiki namespace has very many custom interface messages, it could impact the performance of some operations across the whole wiki.
Extension usage tutorial
Here are some video tutorials I created that outline how pages can be translated with the extension.
There is also a text tutorial you can view here.
Tutorial 1: How to make a page translatable and translate a page
Tutorial 2: How to change the translatable page and re-mark it for translation
Setting up and simplifying the Railways page for translation (final source wikitext)
Working example in practice
An example how the extension works. Note this is not the page is not formatted as best as it could be.
- Source page in English. Notice how you can use the VisualEditor, but it will give you a notice that the page is not supported.
- Source code. Notice, the
</languages>tag at the top, the<translate>and<tvar>tags, and the unit markercomments. - Translating
- An example of incomplete translation (mixed languages)
- A "translation" with translated only one word in the end
- Full translation
Try out the extension!
A test wiki has generously been set up by User:Nikerabbit for you to try out the extension!
Here is the Proposal process page with the Spanish translation imported.
To try translating, please login with these credentials:
Username: Osm-User
Password: 0smUs3rT3st#2022
Usage
Usage of this extension for page translation will not be mandatory over the current system, but rather act as an additional option for translators to use.
This extension is intended to be used on pages that are already close translations to the source language and templates. It should not be used on pages that differentiate in content like how Pl:Tag:amenity=school differs from Tag:amenity=school without consultation with the community.
Choosing a system
One translation system must be chosen per language to be used for translating a page. However, people can use both the new and old translation systems for different languages at the same time for a page. This means that the page would have the </languages> and {{Languages}}language navigation boxes.
To avoid confusion and conflict, translated pages should never use both translation systems for the same language at once unless they are in the process of being converted. Language communities should decide which translation system they want to use for a page by establishing consensus on the talk page of the translated page or their Talk:Wiki.
If consensus cannot be reached, say there are only 2 or 3 translators in a community and they do not agree, the translators should consult a larger near-language community or the English community at their Talk:Wiki page and consensus should be reached among all of the community member present in the discussion there.
Like any process that is agreed-upon by the community, the status of an agreement can change in the future after an appropriate amount of time. For example, a page that is agreed to continue to use the old translation system can change to the new translation system, and a page that uses new translation system can change to the old translation system, if agreed-upon at some point.
Switching a page from the old to new translation system
If there is different content on an old translation system page compared to a source translation page, a one-week notice should be posted on the talk page of the old translation system page that you intend to switch to the new translation system.
If there is similar content to the source page, a notice is not required and editors can proceed to convert a page.
Maintaining the old translation system for a page
If a translator wants a translated page to continue to use the old translation system they should add the {{No new translation}} template to the top of the old translation system page.
Creating a new translation when there was no old translation
Translators can simply convert a page to be translated and begin translating if there was no previous translation.
Switching from the new to the old translation system
If a page translated with the Translated extension wants to switch to the old translation system, the editor should post a one-week notice on their language and the English Talk:Wiki page so that a wiki administrator knows that they plan to do so. If there are no objections after one week from anyone in that language community, they can proceed to copy the translations from the new translation system to an old translation system page and add the {{No new translation}} template. Then, the Wiki administor can proceed to delete the new translation system page.
Deciding which system to use across the entire wiki
Usage of the new translation system at all by a language community can be decided upon. Specifically, if a language community does not want to use the new translation system on any of their pages, they can agree not to through a discussion on their Talk:Wiki page. They should then give notice to translators about this agreement and link to the prior discussion on the Wiki Translation page.
Conversion
When a user wants to translate a page using the Translate extension that already has a previously translated page, they should:
- Determine the source page that they want all translated content to be based off of. Most pages on this wiki would be sourced from the English page, however some pages have been created specifically for use in a different language and therefore those should be source pages. For example, France/OSM-FR's main language is French, so that should be the source page all of its translations are based off of.
- Sync content between source and previously translated pages. If the page they are translating is already translated into the language they want to translate to and has different content then the source page, then that content (if useful) must be translated and added back to the source language page in order to establish consistency in content between both languages. For example, if the French version of a page contains an extra table, image, or snippet of text that might be useful on the source English page, then it should be added to the source English page.
- Prepare the page for translation by going to Special:PagePreparation.
- Mark the page for translation.
- Copy the translations from the old translated page into the Translate UI.
- If the translation is not complete, add the {{New translation in progress}} template to the old translated page to indicate to users that there is a page using the new translation system that is not completely translated.
- When the new translation is 100% complete or complete in a capacity that supersedes the old translation a {{New translation complete}} template should be added to the top of the old translated page.
- Archive the old translation system page by moving it to a subpage of the source page. For example, ES:Tag:highway=footway should be moved to Tag:highway=footway/ES:highway=footway. This will automatically remove the link to the old translated page from the {{Languages}} template and indicate to users they should use the link in the new translate navigation menu.
- When all of the old translation pages have been converted, archived, and {{Languages}} contains no links, the {{Languages}} template can be removed.
Implementation plan
This is the implementation plan to use this extension on the wiki.
Community approval
An RFC and then a two week discussion period will follow.
The addition of the extension to the wiki will not be determined by the percent who approve, but rather if there is consensus, which will be determined by User:Tigerfell. This is because the addition of this extension will not have a significant or irreversible effect on translated content on the wiki. Former translated pages are simply archived and pages translated with the extension can be copied so reversing a page using the Translate extension is not difficult.
Installation
If consensus is reached, User:Tigerfell will proceed to propose the installation of the extension to system administrators.[1]
"The Visual Editor can now be used to edit translatable pages" - note that it requires Mediawiki 1.38, OSM Wiki is running older version. Upgrade of MediaWiki must be done as the first step.
Configuration
After the extension is installed, these user rights should be granted to the following groups.
User rights
Logged-in users
translate
|
Edit using the translate interface | Allows users to edit translations. |
Autoconfirmed users
translate-messagereview
|
Review translations | Allows users mark translations as reviewed. |
Translation administrators
This will be a new user group. Users will be able to request to be part of this from wiki administrators at Talk:Wiki Translation. This is a seperate group to prevent people from inappropriately marking pages for translation.
translate-manage
|
Manage message groups | Allows users to update and manage message groups with web interface. |
pagetranslation
|
Mark versions of pages for translation | Allows users to manage translation of content pages. |
Configuration variables
These be set at the discretion of the system administrators.
Documentation
Documentation on how to use the new Translate extension and how to convert old translated pages will replace the current content on Wiki Translation. This will be done by adapting the contents of this page's Extension usage tutorial and Usage sections to Wiki Translation.
New templates
The templates mentioned above that do not exist yet will be created.
Upstream changes
OpenStreetMap.org depends on the current page translation scheme to direct users to language Wiki pages linked on the website based on the user's website language. Maintainers of the website occasionally run this script to update these links. The script will need to be changed so that it tries to get language subpages (new system) if no namespace language pages exist (old system).
Likely Taginfo also would need to be adjusted.
It is possible that Data items or templates using them would need to be adjusted.
Note that it is possible that some of that systems will not be adjusted, and as effect will ignore pages using new system.
Comments
Voting on this proposal has been closed.
The result is approved (24/31 = 77%) with 24 votes for, 7 votes against and 1 abstention.
Please leave your comments about this proposal below. They will determine if there is consensus to add the extension. The voting has been closed. Please do not add any votes anymore.
I approve this proposal. As proposer. I personally seek to use this extension on pages that already have 1:1 translations like ES:Proposal process which would greatly benefit from an improved translation UI and process that would guarantee the translation remains up-to-date. Templates can be translated with this extension without requiring knowing Wikitext which is a huge plus compared to the current system. Lectrician1 (talk) 00:13, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
- I approve this proposal., as adding/modifying the translated text strings is very convenient using this extension. Warkari (talk) 15:06, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
- I approve this proposal. and thank Lectrician1 for his work to add this extension. --Dcapillae (talk) 17:22, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
- I approve this proposal. --Nw520 (talk) 23:00, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
- I approve this proposal.. --DaveFX (talk) 09:03, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
- I approve this proposal. --higa4 (talk) 05:02, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
- I approve this proposal. I think it's good to have an alternative way to create translations of wiki pages. —seav (talk) 06:09, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
I oppose this proposal. Most of my concerns were resolved and wanted to thank Lectrician1! This version is much better. But due to repeated issues with technical side of OSM Wiki (disappearing categories, random slowdowns, large loading time) I worry about technical side. There are already various intermittent problems, failures and issues happening for no known reason, and noone is able to fix them. And problems with known and implemented fixes are ignored. Adding even more extensions is making situation worse. What happens in case of various failure? "only" loss of translated pages or is entire wiki going to be down or atrociously slow? I am also not enthusiastic about random debris comments supposed to be used in the code. Overall I am not expecting new schema to be much better and has various risks. "Addition of the extension will not be determined by 75% approval or greater and instead consensus" - I am curious who will determine it. --Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 10:32, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
@Mateusz Konieczny Right now I state in #Community approval Tigerfell will determine it. Lectrician1 (talk) 15:28, 3 June 2022 (UTC)I am curious who will determine it.
- I approve this proposal. Language support on the wiki has never fully recovered from the eagerness of a former contributor. Until yesterday, two years after the image of the week was dropped, the main pages in over forty languages still had a blank space for it. Now that the visual editor has been addressed I am happy to endorse this change. --Andrew (talk) 11:33, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
- I approve this proposal. I support this proposal. I've used it on Wikipedia and it's very intuitive and easy to use. Dimitar155 (talk) 11:39, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
- I approve this proposal. An efficient translation workflow is critical to improving the global consistency of tagging as the community and project develops over the years and new consensuses are reached. Automated flagging of the specific blocks/paragraphs that need translation updates is a huge boon to this effort. --Adamfranco (talk) 15:41, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
- I approve this proposal. --고급협동조합 (talk) 06:38, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
- I approve this proposal. --HirschKauz (talk) 15:33, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
- I approve this proposal. --Cafeconleche (talk) 20:55, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
- I approve this proposal. --Kjon (talk) 11:04, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
- I approve this proposal. --Sanchi (talk) 11:09, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
- I approve this proposal. --Robybully (talk) 11:58, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
- I approve this proposal. --Deuzeffe (talk) 12:26, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
- I approve this proposal. Seems worthwhile having this as an option. Good that it now works with the visual editor. --RobJN (talk) 12:31, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
- I approve this proposal. --BubbleGuppies (talk) 08:49, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
I have comments but abstain from voting on this proposal. I dont see major advantages from following that scheme and I'm afraid it will make edits much more complicated. Right now not every pages for translations should be based on English (see eg. Pl:Tag:railway=rail in Polish vs English. I believe we should see in few months how it's working. Also technical possibility to display translation method preferred by language communities would be nice. --Kubahaha (talk) 14:01, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
(retracted) I'm a bit worried about this text in parentheses here: “A user selects a source page of any language (not just English) that all translations will be based on.” Will this lead to pages that get stuck with a non-English source page? Won't that mean that in many cases that page can only be edited by users proficient in that language? Say someone marks the Polish version of highway=footway as the source, does that mean that any non-translation improvements of that page must be done in Polish? --JeroenHoek (talk) 19:09, 10 June 2022 (UTC)
- @JeroenHoek
Won't that mean that in many cases that page can only be edited by users proficient in that language? Say someone marks the Polish version of highway=footway as the source, does that mean that any non-translation improvements of that page must be done in Polish?
- Yes and Yes. However, remember that Translation Administrators will be the only ones who can mark a page for translation. It will be up to their judgement what is the appropriate language a page should be based on. That is why it is a granted permission. In the case of highway=footway, using English as the source page or not using the Translation extension on that page would be appropriate. Lectrician1 (talk) 20:53, 10 June 2022 (UTC)
- I hope that rule won't be abused though. It might be worthwhile to have a policy in place that explicitly states “English, unless”, where reasons to deviate from taking English as the source language would be local pages overwhelmingly maintained and coordinated by mappers who speak the relevant language. A tag should almost never have anything but English as its source language though, unless it is country-specific by definition like traffic_sign=NL:G11 (a traffic sign code defined in Dutch law and used exclusively in the Netherlands). This is all implied in the documentation above, but could do with being made more explicit. --JeroenHoek (talk) 13:10, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
- @JeroenHoek
- I approve this proposal. See above. --JeroenHoek (talk) 13:10, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
- I oppose this proposal. While I support the idea of improving the translations on OSM wiki, I voted no for several reasons. As said by Mateusz, OSM wiki has some ongoing performance issues like really slow loading of some pages. I would like to see these issues resolved first before installing such a large plugin. Secondly, the extension clutters the editors view, both the visual editor (for example via those inline notes) as the source text editor (via translation tags). This hinders the editing process --Cartographer10 (talk) 16:31, 11 June 2022 (UTC)
- For your interest, there are ideas to improve page loading time being developed. --Andrew (talk) 17:48, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
- I approve this proposal. I also share the concerns expressed by others. But I give a yes to the efforts made. I can't assess the technical strength behind OSM and I hope that the introduction can be mastered from the technical side and the use will take place considerately. I still see it as a dress rehearsal or field test, so we can practically see what it will be like. --Chris2map (talk) 07:41, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
- I approve this proposal. --Tony Rotondas (talk) 09:15, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
- I oppose this proposal. As a very active contributor on the Wiki, translating and editing many language pages I strongly oppose even adding this extension. It will bring chaos to an already orderly world. It won't magically create more translators, it will just mean that a lot of articles that have been translated over the 17 years of Wiki will have to be translated again. I understand that we are aiming for articles in different languages to be consistent and not conflict with each other. However, this extension won't change that. As Data items showed well: we have thousands of conflicting tagging standards – the German version says I can tag it as a way, and the Spanish version says I can't. And nobody has cleaned up these categories so far, even if it's easier to fix them, than translations of whole pages.
- The whole proposal is a utopia, that assumes that there is an army of translators who will translate everything in one go and there will be no inconsistencies between languages. People are always the weakest link, not technical limitations.
- This won't make anything easier, only harder. We already have a lot of templates within the templates that make even an experienced user not know where to edit something to change.
- It's too late to implement such an extension. This might have been good in the early days of the Wiki. The content on the Wiki has grown a lot. Making a revolution will only create chaos. The Wiki has been around for 17 years, a lot of translations have been added, a lot of things are already here, and what is missing is manpower, not an extension.
- This proposal assumes that articles in different languages must be IDENTICAL. And this is not and will not be the case. Everyone can write in their own words, giving examples from countries where the language is spoken. For example, the English page may contain an example from the American reality, where a chain of stores is widely known, such as Walmart. However, such an example will not be in the Polish version, because there is no Walmart in Poland, so the example will be tagging a store that occurs in Poland. I would not like to read in Polish about local mapping standards in Indonesia or Switzerland. I wrote more about it here.
- We haven't yet solved the problem with the vast discrepancies between language versions, just look at these categories: Category:Data item issues, especially Mismatched* categories, like Category:Mismatched onNode – it means that we have 600 pages that contradictorily suggest whether something can or cannot be mapped as a node, depending on the language! Almost no one cares, these categories should be empty.
- It's good to use it for short messages, but not for long articles. Everyone would translate 1/100 of the page and it will be a mess – different people will translate the same term differently, without even reading the whole article, without a context.
- We have about 8400 tag and key pages in English, excluding other pages. There are longer and shorter pages but let's assume that writing one article takes one man-hour. So we will need another 8400 hours to process these articles, to WRITE THEM AGAIN. Add to this another man-hours to German and other languages. And consider that sometimes the people who write articles in English and in German are the same people. So at least few thousand hours to write again WHAT IS ALREADY written in the Wiki. Wiki is not complete and there are still many things to write. So if we had been discussing about this extenstion in the beginning of the Wiki I would have even voted for, but now it's too late.
- I've been using this extension on TranslateWiki, and before I started translating the OSM home page there, I had to correct thousands of errors resulting from several hundred messages being translated by dozens of people, often unrelated to OSM and ignorant of what they were translating. I wrote more about it here.
- This revolution will disrupt a well-functioning system of links on external sites, such as osm.org and iD and other, that link to articles in a given language.
- The Wiki has been around since 2005, most things are already translated into active languages. Even if adjusting the translation were to be a "copy-paste" job, it is still a lot of work. Who would do it? For example, for the Polish language, one user has translated more than 2000 articles for 9 years and is no longer active.
- For me, as a long-time translator, it's easier to just copy paste an English page and translate it whole at once.
- What I usually do is not even translating from the English version but create an article in Polish. I've also sometimes created pages in Polish that weren't in English. When I add new articles in Polish, I often improve the article and don't always edit the English version. This means that Polish articles are not the same as English ones, sometimes they are better.
- This will not work with such a small number of Wiki editors. The problem with this Wiki is that there aren't many people to edit articles. For Polish currently I'm the only one who does 98% (but lately I've stopped caring about Polish articles and I'm more concerned with English content), some language don't even have active contributors. We have a limited number of people willing to actively edit the Wiki. Enabling the extension and having to manually add <translate></translate> to each of the several thousand English pages will take time away from those active users who could be doing something else, like adding new pages.
- Imagine translating long pages like Key:access or Multipolygon.
- To summarize, I don't see the benefit of introducing a revolution, except to introduce confusion into the existing order. maro21 19:50, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
- I oppose this proposal. I don't like this new translation system because it based on regional words replace system from wikipedia, but it often make something strange. I don't see the benefit of introducing a revolution, especially make one mess to another mess. My opinion is only based on as a S-Chinese and different kind of T-Chinese user. --快乐的老鼠宝宝 (talk) 20:11, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
- This new system imported zh-Hans(contain zh-CN and zh-SG)/zh-Hant (contain TW,HK,MO)/zh-CN/zh-TW/zh-HK and zh , and they have a complex fallback & regional word system, this is not wikipedia, this is OSMWiki, what we do is make mapper map easily. I can't say what it will do with other language, but I sure at least it will cause mess in Chinese. --快乐的老鼠宝宝 (talk)
- I approve this proposal. This is going to be a big change, but the encouragement of concentrating information per lemma into one single source language should result in better international consistency of mapping and tagging. It eliminates the need to consecutively read almost the same page in multiple different languages to get all the information. Seeing diverse examples from various parts of the world in one place often helps understanding a tagging scheme, even if it is not directly relevant to your local environment, so these examples should not be hidden in translations. The proposal offers sufficient flexibility to keep using the old method or a mix of new and old if needed. --JeroenvanderGun (talk) 21:07, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
- I oppose this proposal.This change did not modify the issues that I have metioned before. Also see comments by user 快乐的老鼠宝宝 which is above.——Herman Lee Zh (talk) 00:01, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
- I oppose this proposal. Still too many cons, and having two systems in parallel will just add confusion. --Riiga (talk) 08:09, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
- I approve this proposal. I have translated over 2,000 pages and templates into Polish. Translating Wiki articles is very time consuming. Today it seems to me that it was a waste of time, because I was constantly criticized for using the wrong word or for using Google Translate in the translation, although I tried to convey the meaning of the sentence or template. In discussions on the Polish forum, translations into Polish were not treated seriously and the English version was mostly referred to. New translations made by novice editors were often sloppy and needed to be revised to remove errors in templates or categories. That is why I am "in favor" as it will simplify and standardize further translations or updates. Discrepancies can always be entered in an additional "national" paragraph. --Władysław Komorek (talk) 14:11, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
- I oppose this proposal.I have several concerns regarding this extension.
- The exension presumes that the wiki pages in all languages must be identical. However this is not the case for osmwiki. While wikipedia is based on knowledge that is shared across all humankind, osmwiki is mostly a guideline for local mappers contributing to osm. Different local communities may have their own interpretation regarding the tagging scheme and often such interpretation is reflected on;y in the osmwiki page in their own language.
- Merging different osmwiki laungage pages is not an option either. Suppose an osmwikipage has English, Russian, French, Deutsch and Arabic versions and they are all different with each other, how would you merge those languages? Beware that, no language (esp. English) should take precedence.
- Local communities have their own well-established osmwiki pages (e.g. Russian OSM). It is reasonable that, whoever contributes locally should have some basic knowledge of the local language involved. In this sense translation becomes unnecessary.
- Nonetheless, I do agree there should be some consistency over different language version. However, such control should not happen at the paragraph / sentence level, as the extension suggests.--TerryZhang (talk) 17:58, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
- @TerryZhang
The exension presumes that the wiki pages in all languages must be identical.
- This is false. The extension is optional to use and allows content to be different in different languages if used. This extension is also not used on Wikipedia.
Merging different osmwiki laungage pages is not an option either. Suppose an osmwikipage has English, Russian, French, Deutsch and Arabic versions and they are all different with each other, how would you merge those languages? Beware that, no language (esp. English) should take precedence.
- The pages do not have to be merged if they are different. However if you would like to, that's why there's the #Conversion process.
Local communities have their own well-established osmwiki pages (e.g. Russian OSM). It is reasonable that, whoever contributes locally should have some basic knowledge of the local language involved. In this sense translation becomes unnecessary.
- Local communities can maintain their pages if they want to. They do not have to use the extension if they don't want to.
However, such control should not happen at the paragraph / sentence level, as the extension suggests.
- One of the revisions of this proposal was allowing for non-1:1 translations, even though the extension seems like it should function that way.
- Lectrician1 (talk) 22:27, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
External discussions
- Talk:Wiki Translation#Alternative solution (2009)
- Talk:Wiki Translation#Translate extension (2012)
- Talk:Wiki/Archive 6#When are we going to migrate to Translate extension? (2019)
- Initial Talk:Wiki discussion pre-proposal (2021)
Places notified of RFC
- OSM talk mailing list
- All of the language channels on the OSM Discord
- German
- Spanish
- French
- Dutch
- Scandinavian
- Turkish
- French OSM Discord
- OSMUS Slack
- French Telegram
- OSM Telegram
- Polish OSM Discord
- Dutch OSM Forum
- Spanish Wiki talk page
- Spanish talk mailing list
- German talk mailing list
- OSMChina Telegram
- WeeklyOSM #611
- Pinged contributors of language namespaces over past 30 days
- OSM Discourse (community.osm.org)
- OSM D-A-CH (German Telegram)
- OSM Asia Telegram
- Wikimaps Telegram (addressed to OSM contributors)
- OSM Vietnam Facebook group
- Various IRC channels