[Foundation-l] Language Review Committee

Thu Apr 5 03:56:48 UTC 2007

Mark Williamson wrote:
> On 04/04/07, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>   
>> Mark Williamson wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> They *are* the ones doing this. The discussion here is about
>>> restrictions being placed on these people.
>>> What we *are* discussing is whether or not these people should be
>>> burdened with translating LanguageBat-ltg.php before they even get
>>> their own Wikipedia. Nothing more, nothing less.
>>>       
>> Completing a language file is reasonable and must be done.  Period.
>> There are XML dumps and other
>> logostics reasons why this makes sense.
>>     
>
> Nobody in the past was required to do it _before_ they could start a
> Wikipedia. I'm not sure why we need that requirement now. It's
> certainly possible to extract the messages from
> http://###.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Allmessages&ot=php
> post ipso facto. Translating the messages via the MediaWiki namespace
> is certainly a lot less 'technical' and is going to be a lot easier
> with little technical experience to do.
>
> I remember when a user wanted to translate the LanguageXX.php into
> Breton, I had to walk him through certain parts (for example, the
> Breton language uses an apostrophe as part of a trigraph, c'h, and you
> have to type c/'h or it will think that's the end of the message).
>   

I'm having a hard time trying to understand this one as well.  Certainly 
any such translation that already exists (for example, creating a new 
Wikibooks/Wikisource/etc. when a Wikipedia in that language already 
exists) perhaps ought to be carried over, but why would it be so much 
harder to simply open a new Wikipedia in a given target language and 
encourage early supporters and community members to simply make the 
appropriate changes to the MediaWiki namespace?  This sounds like a 
technical problem that is forcing people into doing things to suit the 
technology than trying to be amiable to people who very likely are not 
technically inclined.

-- Robert Horning