Re: How does the localisation of MediaWiki work (using Beta-wiki)

Gerard,

je schrijft: ''it is important to
use the standard messages and not have project specific messages that
say the same thing. Deleting /these /messages ensure that when a message
is changed, it will be part of the next update of the software.''

Mijn vragen:
a) Zijn de lokale nl-messages reeds verwijderd?
b) waar kan ik de standaard messsages inzien, en hoe kunnen de nederlandfse
vertalingen hiervan onderhouden worden?

teun

On 7/9/06, Gerard Meijssen <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hoi,
> Because of some misunderstanding let me try to explain how the latest
> method of localisation works.
>
> History:
> There used to be a situation that the localisation was done using a PHP
> message file. This file needed to be updated when new messages came
> about or when existing messages were changed. This happened because of
> work done on the MediaWiki software. In practice this worked not that
> well and there was also a need to have some messages changed to reflect
> a policy or whatever that was specific to a project. Because of this the
> messages exist. You can change and localise the messages in a project.
>
> The challenge:
> The bigger projects with the exception of the en.wikipedia have a lot of
> messages adapted for its language. For people for whom the project
> language is a foreign language, the PHP messages are used because it is
> all the information that is available to help. When a new project
> starts, it does not benefit from the localisation work done elsewhere.
> When a message is changed, it needs to be fixed for that language in ALL
> projects.
>
> The work being done:
> Nikerabbit and Gangleri have done absolutely great work by setting up a
> wiki that is there to manage the localisation of MediaWiki. The result
> of this project is that for many languages a proper localisation exists.
> In the process of getting as far as we are, many issues with right to
> left languages have been fixed both in the messages and in the core of
> the MediaWiki software.. Many messages now make use of the Plural
> construct; this allows for the correct phrasing of singular of plural
> forms of text in the messages. The messages are platform agnostic; they
> will however indicate the correct name of the project.
>
> The current issue:
> In order to make use of the standardised messages, it is important to
> use the standard messages and not have project specific messages that
> say the same thing. Deleting /these /messages ensure that when a message
> is changed, it will be part of the next update of the software. For the
> project specific messages, it is important that someone who maintains
> these messages is subscribed to the mediawiki-i18n-f4n82jGjeJOzKZ/[email protected]
> mailing list. This list is used to inform about the messages/issues that
> are of interest with respect to internationalisation. Wikimedia uses the
> MediaWiki messages in all its projects and in all the languages the
> message Outside the WMF there are many, many more wikis that will
> benefit from us doing a better job localising the software.
>
> The challenge:
> I have set myself the challenge to find more people to help with the
> localisation for more languages. MediaWiki is great software is excels
> because it has already been localised in so many languages. For those
> languages where it did not yet happen, we find that the projects are not
> doing that great. By finding interested people and organisations
> MediaWiki will become more usable. It will become not only more usable
> because it will become easier to start a project in languages like Akan
> or Xhosa it will also become more easy to read projects like the
> en.wikipedia as the user interface will no longer be a distraction.
>
> The question:
> What if any are the practical issues with this strategy. From my
> perspective there are only winners. * Project specific messages are
> unaffected * All other messages benefit from an effort designed to
> provide a timely and improved service.
>
> Thanks,
>      GerardM
> _______________________________________________
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