Wikipedia:Multilingual coordination

We use Intlwiki-L, to coordinate Wikipedia across different languages. Please take a look at the Wikipedia Embassy and join if you're interested in the coordination project.

The Wikipedia community is committed to including any and all languages for which there are Wikipedians willing to do the work. We are aware that many of the world's 6,500 languages are not well-represented on computers or the web, and we are committed to working with language speakers and computing organizations to support as many languages as possible.

Each language Wikipedia currently has a separate set of user accounts. Links between articles in different languages are called interlanguage links.

The URL of the wikipedia for a given language is xx.wikipedia.org, where xx is the 2-letter language code as per ISO 639. (On the mailing list and in discussion, people often write xx: to mean the xx-language wikipedia, as in I'm a regular on fr:.)

---

Encyclopedia projects

See also: Wikipedia:Complete list of language wikis available for a full list.

Wiki encyclopedias that are at least somewhat active have been started in various languages:

1. Afrikaans - started on 2001-11-16.
2. Albanian (Shqip) - translated language file, no articles as of October 15, 2003
3. Arabic (عربي) Translation in progress -- see meta:LanguageAr.php to work on the language file. -戴;&#30505sv
4. Basque (Euskara) - (translation in progress, see m:Azal)
5. Bosnian (Bosanski) - started on 12 December 2002 (created out of the [http:/sh.wikipedia.org/ Serbocroatian (Srpskohrvatski)])
6. Bulgarian (Български) - started on August 3 2003
7. Catalan (Català)
8. Chinese (Hànyǔ) - started in May 2001, Main page made on November 16, 2002
9. Croatian (Hrvatski) (created out of the [http:/sh.wikipedia.org Serbocroatian (Srpskohrvatski)])
10. Czech (Český) - started on 3 May 2002
11. Danish (Dansk) - started on 1 February 2002
12. Dutch (Nederlands) - started on 31 August, 2001
13. English - started on January 2001
14. Esperanto - started on 15 November 2001
15. Estonian (Eesti) - started on 24 August 2002
16. Finnish (Suomi)
17. French (Français) - started on March 23 2001
18. Frisian (Frysk) - started on September 2, 2002
19. Galician (Galego)
20. German (Deutsch) - started on May 2001
21. Hebrew (עברית) - started on July 8, 2003
22. Hungarian (Magyar) - started on July 8, 2003
23. Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia)
24. Interlingua - started on 29 April 2002
25. Irish (Gaeilge) - started on 7 June 2003
26. Italian (Italiano) - started in 2001
27. Japanese (Nihongo)
28. Korean (Hangukeo)
29. Latin (Latina) - started on 22 May 2002
30. Latvian (Latviešu) - started on June 2003
31. Lithuanian (Lietuviškai) - started February 19 2003
32. Low Saxon (Plattdüütsch) - started April 27 2003
33. Nahuatl started on August 10, 2003
34. Malay (Bahasa Malaysia) - started Aug 12 2003
35. Norwegian (Norsk)
36. Occitan (Occitan)
37. Polish (Polska) - started on 26 September 2001
38. Portuguese (Português)
39. Romanian (Română)(has exeeded 1.000 articles and 100 subscribers)
40. Romanica - started on May 13 2003
41. Russian (Русский)
42. Serbocroatian (Sprskohrvatski) (now separated into a Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian version)
43. Serbian (Srpski) (created out of the [http:/sh.wikipedia.org Serbocroatian (Srpskohrvatski)])
44. Simple English
45. Slovenian (Slovensko) - started on 8 March 2002
46. Spanish (Castellano)- started on 20 May 2001
47. Swedish (Svenska)
48. Tamil (தமிழ்) - started on 30 September 2003
49. Welsh (Cymraeg) - started on 15 March 2003
50. Vietnamese (Tiếng Việt) - restarted on [November 12], 2003

For the name Wikipedia in these languages, with raster image, see m:Wikipedia raster name.

Other projects

These are other, non-Wikimedia, free Wiki-based encyclopedia projects independent of Wikipedia

• Tower of Babel: The multilingual, multicultural online journal and community of arts and ideas.
• Enciclopedia Libre - Spanish (Castellano)
• Rossijskaja Vikipedija - Russian (Русский)
• Susning.nu - Swedish (Svenska)

Related projects

• Wikipedia Machine Translation Project

---

Starting a new language wikipedia

See also: Wikipedia:Create a new language in Wikipedia for a tutorial how to get a Wikipedia in your language running.

A certain amount of "critical mass" is necessary in order for a wiki to "take off". Without 5-10 people eagerly writing and arguing and playing with each other, it wouldn't be as much fun. So we encourage anyone who wants to build a wiki in their own language to also go out and announce/recruit for it. :-)

---

Statistics

See also Wikipedia:Multilingual statistics for a more complete overview.

The 20 largest Wikipedias (November 1, 2003):

1. English (169145)
2. German (Deutsch) (34725)
3. French (Français) (18253)
4. Polish (Polska) (15939)
5. Swedish (Svenska) (15593)
6. Dutch (Nederlands) (14278)
7. Japanese (Nihongo) (14239)
8. Danish (Dansk) (13571)
9. Spanish (Español) (9939)
10. Esperanto (9390)
11. Catalan (Català) (4643)
12. Italian (Italiano) (4382)
13. Slovenian (3216)
14. Interlingua (2667)
15. Chinese (Hanyu) (2635)
16. Finnish (Suomi) (2522)
17. Romanian (Română) (1200)
18. Portuguese (Português) (1188)
19. Hebrew (עברית) (1107)
20. Czech (Česká) (1016)

For an overview of the world's biggest wiki websites (Wikipedia or not), see MeatBall:BiggestWiki

---

Policy issues

Some questions you might ask

what can I do to help ?

• please consult Wikipedia Embassy
• consider joining Intlwiki-L, the international mailing list
• just jump through interlanguage links

I have just noticed the fact that the top and bottom bars are in English. Can something be done about that?

• Those lines come from a configuration file that the public can't access (I believe). Please see the embassy for the ongoing effort to translate Wikipedia into different languages.

Here are some "international Wikipedia" policy questions. To a certain extent, these questions will resolve themselves, though.

• How are the various Wikipedias going to be coordinated, if at all? Will we have several quite different articles in different languages? Will English be a lingua franca?
  • In the embassy we are coordinating efforts between languages.
• What are some suggestions about what can be put on new language Wikipedia home pages?
  • See /Homepages to discuss.

• Is there going to be an easy way to link from one language to another?
  • Yes, Interlanguage links are now available for all wikis that are upgraded to our Phase III software.
• Please explain the steps to join Wikipedia with a language not in the current development list - e.g. allocation of a wiki space and hosting vs. having own domain for the national wikipedia; initial setup of the pages to be translated; promotion strategies to be adhered to, etc.? Who is in charge for this?
  • See how to create a new language in Wikipedia for an explanation.
• Anything else?

• Why are some Wikipedias running totally different wiki software?
  • That's for historical reasons. First, we only owned the .com domain, and everything was at .com . Some time later, the .org was made available at the same time a new server was added to the project. The wikis that moved over to the new server (and a new software version) also changed from .com to .org. The wikis that are still at the original server were still on .com until the .com server died, and got moved to .org but haven't been upgraded to the new software yet.
    • so presumably the intention is to move everything to new software?
      • That's correct. This has been slowed so far because there's still a lot of manual labor involved in configuring the wikis, and there's a shortage of developer time. It's getting more and more automated, and hopefully soon we'll have a newer interface translation system that will actually be human-maintainable. --Brion 07:19, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)