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Language Detector

Is anyone else getting the same thing for http://languid.cantbedone.org/, "It Works!" and nothing else? If so, are there any other ones we know to be reliable we can use or should we just remove it--Jac16888Talk 02:41, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

I've ceased using it a while ago. It should be replaced with one that actually works. -- Blanchardb -Me•MyEars•MyMouth- timed 03:09, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
Found a working one that seems decent so i went ahead and added it--Jac16888Talk 12:30, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Placement of Contents table

Why is the Contents page after Section 1? As well as being nonstandard, this makes it loonger to skip over section 1 to look at the new pages. Admittedly I could set up a link to go straight to section 3, but it seems an odd thing to have to do- the contents should come directly after the lead, surely? Am I missing something here? SimonTrew (talk) 09:34, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Frankly, I don't know, and since this page gets an average of 10 to 15 edits per day, it would be next to impossible to determine who did that and for what purpose. Fixing it is quite simple, though. -- Blanchardb -Me•MyEars•MyMouth- timed 02:12, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
I believe it was accidental. If not, would the person who did this please respond here within the next week? -- Blanchardb -Me•MyEars•MyMouth- timed 23:29, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
No response, so I went ahead and fixed this. -- Blanchardb -Me•MyEars•MyMouth- timed 01:30, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Scsbot issues

Due to some corruption (described at User talk:Scsbot#Corruption in WP:RD.2FS) I've left a message on scsbot's talkpage, which I believe will cause it to stop working, presumably until its maintainer (who has been offline for several days) can attend to it. I guess this means it won't add the date header to this page tomorrow, so until it's fixed can I ask someone to take care of the header manually. Thanks. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 00:42, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Merely leaving a message on the bot's talk page will not cause it to stop working until its maintainer takes action, or until the bot's emergency shutdown button is activated by an admin. Thanks for alerting us. -- Blanchardb -Me•MyEars•MyMouth- timed 17:14, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Language recognition site down?

I removed the site that was linked to for determining the language because it 404'd multiple times. Can another be found? Lәo(βǃʘʘɱ) 00:50, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

The one at Google still works. I contacted Xerox to inquire of what happened to the site, and I am awaiting their response. -- Blanchardb -Me•MyEars•MyMouth- timed 01:18, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I have received word by email that this update was done by a Xerox representative as a response to my request. -- Blanchardb -Me•MyEars•MyMouth- timed 00:03, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

That's good. That site is useful. Lәo(βǃʘʘɱ) 16:53, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Translation of images

Is there an equivalent of {{Notenglish}} for pages in the File: namespace? File:Chronologie Mesopotamie 2.png for instance needs translation as it is used in a couple important English articles but the text of the image is in French. How would I go about listing this for translation? -- Ϫ 02:46, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't believe there is an equivalent template. (In fact, I'd be surprised if there was.) As far as listing it for a translation goes, I'd just list it here. A French translation could probably be done pretty quickly, because it's not lengthy prose. The hard part would be taking the translation, and reworking the image to have the English text, but that could be done by either the translator or any party with access to the translated text and a decent image editor. Lәo(βǃʘʘɱ) 03:15, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
The file in question is in Commons, not Wikipedia. I'm not sure they have a translation department like ours at Commons, but certainly a translation is desirable. In any case, a translation request should be done at Commons if possible. -- Blanchardb -Me•MyEars•MyMouth- timed 00:08, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
Should I just go ahead and place a {{Notenglish}} tag on it anyway? -- Ϫ 13:44, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
I would. The issue of the image being on the Commons as well is slightly irrelevant, I think. 1) Just because it is there doesn't mean that it can't be worked on here, and the issue of translation applies more directly to en.wiki than the Commons. It can just be re-uploaded. 2) All I can find on translation works on Commons is this, which wouldn't apply, as the image is not an .svg. Lәo(βǃʘʘɱ) 16:57, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
There's an offer of the word translation at WP:PNT, and also I am happy to translate it. I had a look at the image, though, and in my opinion it would be easier just to create a new equivalent image. SimonTrew (talk) 18:55, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
If it's at Commons, then indeed a new image must be created, otherwise we'd be disrupting the French Wikipedia. -- Blanchardb -Me•MyEars•MyMouth- timed 02:04, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
Yes indeed. What I meant more was, because the word lengths etc will likely differ, it may be better to create a significantly different image (with the same information) rather than just spray over the French labels with English ones. SimonTrew (talk) 15:49, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
Looking at the text, the lengths of the text after translation won't differ significantly IMO, but then I'm no graphic designer, and minor adjustments to the sizes of boxes and lines will most likely be required for aesthetic reasons. Simon, if you are able to do the graphics, it would probably make more sense for one person to do the whole lot in one fell swoop; my offer nevertheless stands to either translate or help with the translation. -- Александр Дмитрий (Alexandr Dmitri) (talk) 23:41, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
OK, I'll pull the image down and have a close look at it. One worry I have is if the text is kerned at the edges into the colours, it may be hard to spray over it well. If you want to get on with the word translation, I am more than happy to have an image with an empty load of boxes etc to throw it into. I am not a professional graphic designer but I have been doing 2D and 3D graphics for a number of years so should be able to sort that end of it out, and I'll upload an "empty" version to Commons (probably in black and white cos it's easy to flood fill with any colour after) which can serve as a template for any language. Give me a day or so. I have the same problem with some Hungarian maps I need put into English so this will be useful practice for me. I have not done it for a bit. SimonTrew (talk) 00:07, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
This image is heavliy anti-aliased in the text (and lines) and I do reckon better doing from scratch, I can hardly read some of the text even on high zoom, especially the light grey labels (though most can be guessed). It's a poor quality image, really, to start with. (It also has a scaling on it, which is essentially meaningless on a drawing of this kind, which should be scalable.) SimonTrew (talk) 00:21, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
OK I translated the main labels and uploaded the image to File:Mesopotamian Chronology 2.png as a derivative work. The side labels will be easy enough (if tiresome to do) but I still wonder if the small gray text is possible to fit in, even if decipherable. You will see I have enlarged the text slightly. I did not check the translations of the names, just went on the obvious translation, in particular probably peuple de mer (New Deal) is not correctly translated, but it is more just as an example to get your opinion. I translated invention de l'écrit a gray label at the bottom left. This is in six point arial and even that will not be legible to many readers. Your call, hope this serves to help you judge. SimonTrew (talk) 01:15, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
OK I realised I made somewhat of a cockup, for some reason i downloaded the 422px wide "preview" not the 731 full width version, nevertheless my reservations still stand because even on the wider one the side labels are almost illegible on a 1024×768 LCD screen. Sasha I would appreciate your views, I don't mind doing it again on the wider one if you think it worthwhile. I realise, after all, this is just an example, and perhaps not a good one.
By the way it took the time between the previous posts i.e. just under an hour to do this much, with a couple of false starts to work out the best way to do it. So it's quite feasible to do it, if worthwhile. SimonTrew (talk) 01:26, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Using cleanup-translation template and PNT

(A recent user talk conversation that I think worth copying here. I should appreciate your views.) — SimonTrew (talk) 09:14, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand why you are listing already-translated articles at WP:PNT. This project is for pages that partially or wholly need translation, usually in the former case there are quotes that need translation, or in the latter that they have been dumped into English wWikipedia from other Wikipedias or from other sources. I don't understand your motive for adding them here.

Can you please enlighten me what you expect to be done with them? I think PNT probably is the wrong place to list them, but I am sure we can guide you to a better place to list them.

Best wishes SimonTrew (talk) 23:56, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Hi Simon - I am just follwing the instructions on the cleanup-translation template. Hope this helps. Zargulon (talk) 11:07, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply at my talk page. I am not quite sure what you mean by "instructions", but I see that the template says "please see this article's entry on Pages needing translation into English for discussion". My guess is from that you decided to list at PNT, whereas, also guessing, the normal way around would be for it to be listed at PNT then have its translation templates replaced by cleanup-translation once the main translation is done but fixes by a subject expert were thought needed.
I have no problem with your way of doing it, but it did puzzle me. In any case, I had already moved them to the "Pages needing cleanup after translation" section, where probably you would have been better off putting them in the first place. That being said, I can imagine it would be thought unusual suddenly to find a page appearing in that section that had never appeared as needing translation, so I can see your bind.
Might I suggest, perhaps, then, that if other articles of this kind come your way, you list them as you did in the top section of PNT, but make it clearer that they need cleanup (so as to let someone else move them down, rather than simply listing in the section below yourself). I myself, and a few others, tend to let someone else move/delete entries about articles we have translated, to let others give an opinion, rather than just do it ourselves, so perhaps that would be a good compromise in your case too? The instructions are almost inevitably followed, it just then allows for a second opinion. e.g. after writing as you did for your articles, put "Suggest move to cleanup section", that would be all that is needed I suspect.
You did right. Keep up the good work. Best wishes SimonTrew (talk) 21:39, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
Hi Simon - the cleanup-translation template says (e.g. for Mont Gargan)
"If you have just labeled this page as needing such [cleanup-translation] attention, please add {{subst:Duflu | pg= Mont Gargan | Language = Mont Gargan | Comments = }} to the bottom of Pages needing translation into English."
That is the instruction I was following. Hope this helps. Zargulon (talk) 23:27, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
("Add at the bottom")... ah. I did not see that, as I simply looked at the documents and not at the template itself, which I have now looked at. I suppose it depends on your interpretation of what "at the bottom" means; you took it to mean at the bottom of the "Pages for consideration" section, whereas I would interpret it as at the bottom of the "Pages needing cleanup after translation" section (which is also the bottom of the whole document). I think it's a little fragile anyway to assume that the second is also the last section in the document.
So, since it seems genuinely ambiguous and a little fragile, I would suggest a rewording. It's probably best to take this to the tempalate's talk page, but to get your opinion first, how about just putting explicitly "at the bottom of the Translated pages that could still use some cleanup section of WP:Pages needing translation into English". I would also suggest changing "please add" to "please consider adding", because there may be articles which an editor does not consider useful to list at PNT (e.g. if they are in other projects/categories where a subject expert is more likely to look than PNT). I imagine that cleanup-translation was originally intended specifically for articles originating at PNT (or other translation request pages) but I don't see that that needs must be the case (and if it is, it should say so explicitly at the doc page).
I would also change the title of the section from "Translated pages that could still use some cleanup", which sounds a bit informal to me, to "Pages requiring cleanup after translation". Perhaps you have a better suggestion? We can add a redirect anyway, so if the section name changes we just change the redirect.
What do you think if of that?
Best wishes SimonTrew (talk) 08:33, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
The template already redirects to a section of this page ("Section 3") but it seems to be the wrong section from what you are saying. Probably it was originally the right number of section but then someone put in a section before it. It should direct to section 4 now. Zargulon (talk) 12:11, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
No, that didn't work so I changed it back to section 3. Zargulon (talk) 12:15, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Kleina

I brought this article over from the Icelandic Wikipedia and put a translation tag on it, but it was speedy deleted. How can I get it brought over? ChildofMidnight (talk) 19:17, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Sections needing translation

While this article says that the {{notenglish}} template shouldn't be used when only part of an article is not in English, that template did have an option to add a second unnamed argument, which the template would substitute for the word "article" in the displayed message. I've revised the template to look for this argument and, if it's equal to "section", then instead of displaying the threat to delete or move the article after two weeks, instead it now says "If the section is not rewritten in English it may be deleted." So now there seems to be no reason not to use the template for part of an article. If others agree, should the boilerplate text section be updated to reflect this? —Largo Plazo (talk) 12:43, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

(moved from WP:PNT for posterity Si Trew (talk) 08:11, 20 November 2009 (UTC))

There's a problem here, with the {{notenglish}} template when the section argument is used. Even though only a section needs to be translated—and regardless of the fact that the English part of the article has been there for nearly three years, while the Japanese text was added two months ago—the template says that the remedy for a failure to translate the text is to delete the article. I think I need to go to the policy page and see about getting that fixed. —Largo Plazo (talk) 12:07, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

It's two separate problems. First, the rules for handling a section are the second set of three items underneath #Boilerplate text, above, and they don't include use of the {{notenglish}} template. Second, the {{notenglish}} template shouldn't even have a section option because it's inapplicable to that case, let alone should it threaten to delete the entire article on account of a section. —Largo Plazo (talk) 12:12, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I resolved the template issue by revising the template so that when the second unnamed argument is "section", it doesn't mention a two-week window, and it doesn't threaten deletion of the article, only of the section. —Largo Plazo (talk) 12:36, 18 November 2009 (UTC)


I was wondering if it would have been better to use a named argument, but if it ain't broke don't fix it. We could add {{notenglish-section}} I suppose, but is there a need to complicate things for poor editors who have (well at least I do) enough trouble finding the right template? If it works, stick with it. I'll update the doc if you haven't. Si Trew (talk) 10:46, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
I've updated the doc and added testcases. Si Trew (talk) 11:10, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
{{notenglish-section}} now transcludes {{notenglish}}. Andreas (T) 17:48, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
Excellent, thanks! —Largo Plazo (talk) 18:19, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
I've changed it to use {{Not English}}, since that avoids the redirect. I've added doc and testcases to it, and the two "see also" each other. Si Trew (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
Could someone please fix it so that {{notenglish-section}} and the testcase pages are not included in Category:Wikipedia articles needing translation--Jac16888Talk 04:55, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
Never mind I got it--Jac16888Talk 05:12, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, I hadn't spotted it. The testcases presumably were by transclusion, I didn't put them in that cat. Si Trew (talk) 08:11, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Notifications

Is there a bot that could notify editors based on the language of articles listed here? I regularly translate from a few languages, but sometimes I just miss the updates on this page on my already-too-large watchlist. If we can get a bot to notify based on the language listed on the templates, it might help a little. Not sure if one of the existing bots that do the AfD/Prod notifications could do that. Any opinions? cheers. -SpacemanSpiff 17:46, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

OK Own up

...who has looked at the Wikimedia Foundation comments on donations and wanted to Wikify or translate them (or, heaven forbid, list them at PNT)?

Best wishes to you all. Si Trew (talk) 22:26, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

cleanup-translation

I am not sure that {{cleanup-translation}} expresses our sentiment clearly. It does not require someone with dual fluency, and no such thing exists, it requires someone with a knowledge of the subject assuing good translation with little knowledge. I would recommend changing "Somone who approaches dual fluency" to "Someone with an understanding of the subject".

I should appreciate your views. Si Trew (talk) 21:07, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

"Someone with an understanding of the subject" doesn't distinguish the needs of the pages listed here from the needs of any other page on Wikipedia that needs good editing. Dual fluency might be overkill, but I'd say a couple of needs might exist:
  • Someone who can look back at the original and see what the original translator might have overlooked, or not understood. In my case, for example, my acquaintance with Spanish and French is decades-long, and yet my vocabulary has a lot of holes, especially in terms of figures of speech, and I resort to dictionaries and reference to Google searches to see what context certain turns of phrase are commonly found in. While I can sometimes tell that what someone has written in Spanish is just poorly written, as one often finds in English articles, there are times when I can't even be sure whether it's a question of poor writing or a gap in my knowledge. The result is that I can sometimes do what I think is a really good job through an entire article, but sometimes there's just a sentence here and a phrase there that I really could have been wrong about, and it would be worthwhile for someone to go back and double-check.
  • Even without reference to the original, someone who is adequately familiar with both languages, and see certain phrases in the translation the trigger the reaction, "Oh, he made that mistake" and fix it. For instance, when I come across "eventually" in a translation where it doesn't make sense, I know immediately that it's a mistranslation of "éventuellement" or "eventualmente" or "eventueel", which means the English word should be "possibly". —Largo Plazo (talk) 19:11, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
I know this is a very late reply, but I agree with everything you said. Si Trew (talk) 19:31, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Tip re Arabic script

A couple of my colleagues frequenting this page commonly declare Arabic to be Persian (Farsi) and vice versa. I guess these two, as well as Urdu, are the three most widely used languages that use the Arabic script (though I don't think I've come across any Urdu here). I don't know either language beyond a very few scraps of Arabic, but I've learned to recognize the letters, and one really helpful tip I can give you, which repeats what's said on Wikipedia:Language recognition chart, is to look for heavy use of the Arabic definite article, which is alif-lam, ال, prefixed (i.e., attached to the right side of) to the word it qualifies. If the qualified word starts with alif, the lam is obligatory combined with it into a ligation, giving الا. Examples: اليغاور السنوريّات لاتعتبر البرك الأنها. Also, in Arabic, a lot of words end in ﺓ or ﺔ. On the other hand, the letter ﮒ (Arabic ﻛ with a slanted line over it) is a likely sign of non-Arabic writing. I hope this helps! —Largo Plazo (talk) 19:34, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Easier than that, in my opinion: Arabic has vowel marks, lines over letters and under, Urdu has small circles above some letters, Persian looks like Arabic without the dashes. --IP69.226.103.13 | Talk about me. 06:10, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Categories by language

Are these sorted by language anywhere? I can do many of the South Asian ones, but it would be easier if they were sorted by language. I was wondering if they are categorized anywhere in that way, so I can just watch the categories for particular languages. --IP69.226.103.13 | Talk about me. 05:38, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

No, sorry. There are just too few non english articles at any given time, and they usually only stay a couple of weeks, to make it worth creating categories for every possible language--Jac16888Talk 05:47, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
I thought that would be the case, but I was hoping it would be easier to watch. Thanks. --IP69.226.103.13 | Talk about me. 06:11, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
I don't see why we can't just bundle them, in that case. As the OP suggests, geographic headlines such as "South Asian" might be a good way to tackle the problem. Or, we could go by List_of_language_families#Language_families. — Sebastian 01:43, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
Because it would mean dozens of subcategories to handle at most maybe 15-20 articles, seems like a waste of time to me--Jac16888 Talk 18:03, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
It takes time either way; the question is only: Whose time? The reason why I'm asking is because when I became aware of the page, I was interested in translating an article, but I was discouraged when it felt like picking a needle out of a disorderly haystack. By saving time for posters here, we add a burden to the translators. Discouraging those who are interested in doing the actual job is a recipe for backlog. That said, you did catch up with your backlog once (three years ago per #Nothing at all), so maybe it's not as much a problem as it appears to me. — Sebastian 18:41, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
Re "dozens of subcategories". Who says it has to be that way? We can choose any classification that is helpful. To make it easier on people who submit the entries, one can center around what most people would be able to recognize, such as closeness to English and the script employed. One such choice might be:
  1. Germanic languages
  2. Romance languages
  3. Other languages using the Latin alphabet
  4. Languages using alphabets similar to Latin, such as Cyrillic or Greek
  5. Languages using Arabic script or Hebrew
  6. Languages using Devanagari related scripts
  7. Languages using Chinese characters or Hangul
  8. Other
— Sebastian 19:01, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
There are currently 8 articles in Category:Wikipedia articles needing translation, it rarely gets more than about double that, the time taken to check all of them (or simpler still just read those the entries on the top section of WP:PNT) is low. To create all the needed categories, adapt the notenglish template so it adds a page to a different category depending on the language (and ensuring somebody adds the language identifer - more often than not they don't)(and made even more complicated by attempting to group language, and assuming people even know which language goes in which group) and ensuring all these categories are monitored for new entries seems like a considerable amount of effort for little reward. The current system works well, why fix what isn't broken?--Jac16888 Talk 19:14, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
Oh, I'm sorry - I realize that was just a misunderstanding. I shouldn't have posted this in this section. I meant to comment on the structure of this page, not on the category. Would it be OK to change the current date headlines to the ones I suggested above? — Sebastian 19:30, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
On further reflection, I see the connection between Category:Wikipedia articles needing translation and this page. I presume that category only populates § Pages for consideration, right? That's indeed only few articles. So what I wrote above should refer to § Translated pages that could still use some cleanup only. — Sebastian 19:35, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
That would be easier to implement, but I believe it would complicate the page more than it would clarify it, (people try to add pages, don't know where, start placing them anywhere, or create more new sections for them, or just don't bother etc). Put simply, I would Oppose this proposed change, but you are of course welcome to try and get consensus for it from other editors--Jac16888 Talk 19:44, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
Well, that is of course the way it's usually done on Wikipedia, but there is a systemic problem with it: People who would participate in such a vote would be primarily those who spend time editing this page, and who naturally would oppose any demand on their time. New translators who we hope will find this page in the future - an important target group - will not participate. The only way I can see to remedy this is by appealing to you (and any other contributors to this page) to put yourself in other people's shoes. Please do consider what I wrote above ("It takes time either way...") and think about what would make it easiest for new translators. — Sebastian 20:17, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
Just as a sidenote: how do you think the change you want to implement will attract more people to this page? Translation as it is is not really top of the list of most users. Disclaimer: I am also one of the regulars on this page, and (I may be wrong) the regulars here number no more than perhaps 20 (and Jac16888 seems to be doing the main work, unthanked ). Lectonar (talk) 20:33, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
If, by "attract more people", you mean that more people look on this page, then you're missing my whole point. Maybe it's easier to explain by analogy: It's not just about getting customers in your store, but about them making a purchase. If it's hard for them to even find what they want in your shelves, they will check out the store next door instead. What's worse, they probably won't return. — Sebastian 01:34, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
And more: I think this page here has been on my watchlist for almost my whole wiki-life, which means more than 8 years now, and until about 4 or 5 years ago, I seemed to be the only admin dropping in from time to time. Lectonar (talk) 20:36, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
How do you know who dropped by and left when they didn't like it? — Sebastian 01:34, 7 March 2013 (UTC)    (I stopped watching this page. If you would like to continue the talk, please do so here and ping me.)
The main problem does not seem to be categorization, but more the fact that translating is such a tedious job, with all them machine translation dropped on us, which tend to clutter up in the needs clean-up section. The work gets done here, but at a more or less constant pace, which has not changed significantly over the years. Lectonar (talk) 20:39, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
(after edit conflicts) I think you may still be confusing two things or two types of activity here. The section listing pages that are actually in a foreign language has rapid throughput; when an article doesn't get translated, it's soon deleted, reverted to a prior English stage, or redirected. People often don't know what language such articles are in when they tag them, and someone who can read the language is required. I imagine that like me, those of us who have this page watchlisted are primarily looking for those - like the Icelandic one I just finished dealing with (which was, however, correctly identified!) because rapid action is needed. The other part of the page, the articles in poorly translated English, has very slow throughput because it requires a different kind of skill and commitment - carefully checking the text, which in many cases is long (these are often the result of misguided responses to the "expand from foreign-language Wikipedia" template) and in almost all cases retranslating it. Plus the usual work of adding explanations and links for the English-speaking reader. There's no rush on these, and it's painstaking and pretty thankless work, and there are also plenty of articles out there that are not so tagged and sometimes worse; I tend to give those a higher priority when I find them because they are not listed here. Anyone willing and able to work on that backlog is very welcome, but because there's no big rush and because the articles are already in English and what they are about is therefore known, it's relatively easy to browse through that section and find an article that was originally in a language one speaks. Grouping them by language family would not add much value in my opinion - for one thing, very few people can translate all the languages in a language family, and for another there are a few languages that can be written in more than one script; then again, for a few articles in that section it's not known what language they were originally in. If like most people you can do the nitty gritty work of improving a bad translation when it was originally in between one and three foreign languages, then it's just as quick to search by the language name(s) using your browser. Whereas in the upper section, those needing translation, there are few enough that one can cast one's eye over the list or depend on the watchlist notification - but there will be some every week where the language is listed as unknown. Yngvadottir (talk) 20:45, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
No, I'm not confusing the two types of activity anymore. What makes you think that I still am?
As for the rest of your post, you do have a lot of good points, and I agree with most of them. In particular, I agree that the real backlog, in the lower section, is very time intensive. I just spent 30 minutes and got just one paragraph done, about as much as the editor who added their name to the entry for the article six months ago. (In addition to the points you listed, one has to choose from a different set of relevant links, which makes it time consuming to find the best one.) That puts my request in proportion: While we may save new visitors minutes, the actual work takes hours. So, I feel less strongly about this, even though I still wish we were more new-visitor-friendly here. — Sebastian 01:34, 7 March 2013 (UTC)   (I stopped watching this page. If you would like to continue the talk, please do so here and ping me.)

Anyone can translate Islamic dates

I don't know how to translate the Islamic calendar dates. I edited the one article stupidly thinking the date was just wrong, but I realize now that the date is probably correct but its an Islamic calendar date. I can only guess its early 20s, but I don't know how to translate. Anyone else? --IP69.226.103.13 | Talk about me. 05:38, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedia articles needing cleanup after translation

I've been through this cat several times the last few weeks, removing the cat where the article has already been cleaned up or misplaced, stubbing the crap and cleaning a few, I've managed to get it down from over a hundred article to under 50, and the problem is, most of the ones left are a mess, some are really bad, the question is, how do we get these dealt with? Do we just leave them to be sorted over time (which evidence suggests isn't very likely) or start stubbing and prodding, or do we try and recruit people who can deal with them. So, lets brainstorm "mindmap" here people, any ideas?--Jac16888Talk 22:50, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

"Boilerplate text"

I suggest "Standard text". I know what boilerplate it, in fact i have heated metal type over a boiler, but people coming here who may not have English as tbeir first language, I think an obscure word to say to mean "what you must put here". I suggest "Standard text" but I t hink better would be what I just said "what to put here", or something like that. I quite expect other editors to do better, but it only just occured to me that is quite an obscure phrase really, I understand it but I am English and a typographer and software engineer. I think better reworded, as best everyone here can (better than me, for sure).

Best wishes

S. Si Trew (talk) 19:25, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

When did this become so complicated?

It used to be pretty straightforward to list a page here, now, all of a sudden, it takes four or five steps, none of them explained as to how to actually list something on this page. Woogee (talk) 05:59, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

hasn't changed, and its still dead easy, its all explained on the tag. Add {{Notenglish}} to the page then from that copy the {{subst:Needtrans | pg = Pages needing translation into English | Language = unknown | Comments = }} ~~~~ on the template to the bottom of the Pages for consideration section. Wheres the difficulty?--Jac16888Talk 12:52, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Nothing at all

The language of this article is.....there isn't one actually. There you have it ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, there are no articles listed in Category:Wikipedia articles needing translation, add to that the fact there are just 4 articles left in Category:Wikipedia articles needing cleanup after translation and I would say its bloody brilliant. Nicely done everyone who helps out here, lets keep it up. Thanks--Jac16888Talk 18:50, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Largoplazo likes this.
Kubek15 write/sign likes this thinks it's boring here...
Salvio likes this too. Salvio ( Let's talk 'bout it!) 19:18, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
Favonian hates it! It feels so ... empty ;) Favonian (talk) 19:21, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
Too bad :( The only French I've seen on the English Wikipedia lately was on my talk page, and it came from two users, both of whom are now indef-blocked. -- Blanchardb -Me•MyEars•MyMouth- timed 19:33, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
Yeah I am getting fed up with no French or Latin too, and I just learned Hungarian and bugger all of that either. I know that means we are all doing a good job, but I kinda miss it. Si Trew (talk) 19:27, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Pages needing cleanup after translation

I see from an earlier heading here that before I started swinging by here regularly, there were hundreds of articles in Category:Needing cleanup after translation. Bravo to those who helped knock that down to the current 4! However, since the spate of articles actually needing translation seems to have abated and we're all more or less sitting around twiddling our thumbs, I thought I'd mention that the other day instead of just scrolling down past all the semi-impenetrable stuff at the top of the page, I clicked on a "see also" link and found, one step away, Category:Rough translations. I'm not at all sure how these differ from "Needing cleanup after translation" except they are kind of hidden away and the ones I looked at are horrendous. I suggest we combine these 2 listings somehow and get cracking on making these chunks of machine translation readable. Also, is there any way to tag them or list them by original language? This is the kind of little project I can work on at work, if I don't have to spend a long time finding an article whose original is in a language I can read before assessing its level of difficulty and its length, and I suspect others would also be more likely to pitch in on these if they were organized and classified somewhere obvious.Yngvadottir (talk) 20:08, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Rough translations has always been the thing I've been leading towards approaching, but never wanting to. I did recently list it at Wikipedia:Community portal/Opentask to try ans get more interest in it, but beyond that haven't done much, I don't really want to start listing them here. The problem with a lot is that they're in the state they appeared on the site, so its very difficult to judge the original language other than guessing from the subject of the article. A lot of them seem to be about miliatry topics for some reason. I really think that the first step to sort these out it to ruthlessly prod or stub the ones that are almost entirely unintelligible--Jac16888Talk 20:18, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
If you let me know what languages you;re strongest with I can probably come up with a list of articles that originated in that language--Jac16888Talk 14:36, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
I've picked off half a dozen of these since posting this - quite fun actually. I continue to think that if they were sorted by original language, more people would also find it fun, but maybe I'm just cracked. Anyway, I can read a bizarre number of languages: I see that as more applicable to editing here on en.wikipedia than the ability to write or speak them and I was running out of userboxes worth displaying, so I have put up reading knowledge boxes on my userpage on the model of the Babel ones. However, they have now forbidden me to go online from work, so assuming they don't actually fire me, I'll have to slack off somewhat. . . . Got any suggestions for articles that should be top priority? . . . But. I keep coming across sections of articles that should be in the Rough Translations category and aren't. I think it needs to be taken under the wing of this better watched page somehow, so that adding pages to the category doesn't amount to throwing them into a deep pit.Yngvadottir (talk) 17:06, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
Priority? All of them. A lot of those articles are in terrible shape. I've finally done it, I expanded the rough translation tag to include the list at pnt instructions same as the other two, and added the first 10 articles from the cat to pnt. Oddly it seems a lot of the articles are military/weapon related. I also posted a note at the soviet union wikiproject asking them to sort themselves out--Jac16888Talk 01:52, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
w00t! Yes, some of them are abominable. Others are just sad--people have tried. There also seem to be a significant number of places. I haven't got fired yet, so I'll continue picking off German, Norwegian, French, etc. where I can. Let me know if you find any Icelandic, since that is clearly the most exotic thing I can read. I do notice that in some cases the template identifies the language. I wonder if I can use that to search.Yngvadottir (talk) 15:56, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Very bilingual Spanish-English help requested

I've been translating Bartolomé Ordóñez from Spanish. There is one very difficult passage corresponding to this portion of the English language work (see Spanish-language article for original). I think I'm at least very close, but the descriptions of the tombs were quite confusing, and I might have gotten something wrong. A check by someone else would be very welcome. - Jmabel | Talk 06:09, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Resolved

And another, which may not need as much of an expert: I'm translating es:Pedro Roldán. Eventually, of course, it will go at Pedro Roldán; right now it's at User:Jmabel/temp. There are a couple of phrases that are throwing me, so I'm here seeking help. Please, if you are confident, feel free to edit the article directly even while it is in my user space.

  • With reference to his daughter Francisca Roldán: "...se encargaba del encarnado de las imágenes..." I'd guess that this means that she was in charge of the rough shaping of the sculptures, before he would do the details, but I'm not completely confident in that interpretation.
  • "De formación naturalista, su imaginería evoluciona hacia un mayor barroquismo, con un estilo personal tan elegante como libre de formas." I'm not sure I understand libre de formas in this context.

- Jmabel | Talk 05:05, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Since it has been two weeks and no one has stepped in, I have moved the article to Pedro Roldán; the two phrases mentioned above remain untranslated. - Jmabel | Talk 06:33, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Lists of author's/composer's works

I have been unable to locate any Wiki policy regarding the need to translate the original language titles of author's/composer's works. Henri Bertini is a typical example of the case in question - please see talk page and recent history, and if possible point me to a relevant section in MoS. Thanks.--Kudpung (talk) 07:54, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't think there is a policy, or even a guideline. My own tendency would be to translate the ones that are merely informative (e.g. "Trio pour piano, violon, et basse, no 1" would become "Trio for piano, violin, and bass, no. 1") and to render those that are more like true titles in both languages (e.g. where the article in question has "Again a little trifle", I'd also put the original in parentheses, and would translate that as "Another little trifle," not the over-literal "Again a little trifle"). One of the advantages of the latter approach is that it does let you be more colloquial in the translation without being confusing, because the original is there for anyone who cares. - Jmabel | Talk 17:02, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
Thanks Jmabel. I think that's basically what I had already done. Seems I was on the right track.--Kudpung (talk) 18:26, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Introduction sections

How would people feel about moving the standard procedures and boilerplate text sections to a template and transcluding it here? Mainly to make it easier to find the actual articles instead of scrolling through all that--Jac16888Talk 10:50, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

I think that would be a good idea! Salvio ( Let's talk 'bout it!) 07:33, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
Yeah transclusion seems an obvious thing to do, and I agree with the reason you state. For one thing, doing so would reduce the chances of the boilerplate being accidentally mangled. I don't know why you think it would make it smaller to display though (put it in some kind of show/hide box?) Si Trew (talk) 13:57, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
I meant in the edit box--Jac16888Talk 14:00, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
I've taken WP:BOLD (sort of, since there is a "consensus" of three editors) and moved these sections to WP:Pages needing translation into English/Procedures and WP:Pages needing translation into English/Boilerplate. Si Trew (talk) 05:22, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Company of Death

The article Company of Death has a tag from this page. However, there is no sign of it in the listing. The issue appears to be that a paragraph has been taken from an Italian translation of a Latin source, so it should have been a section tag. The question is, what to do. The page has just gone through a delete discussion with a keep result. Should the tag be removed or changed to a section tag? Ideally, could an Italian speaker translate the section? Otherwise, the solution seems to be to remove the section entirely (it isn't essential to the article). Monstrelet (talk) 11:42, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

I'd say remove it, a translation would probably lose some of the meaning since its most likely an antiquated form of italian and its doesn't appear to lend much to the article anyway--Jac16888Talk 16:52, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
Noticed of the Emperor's coming, the Milanese (authorities) commanded to prepare the weapons to resist him. And a company ("societas") is made of nine hundred chosen men, fighting on great horses who swear that no one would have fled from the battlefield for fear of death and they would not allow anyone to betray the Municipality of Milan, and also they swore that they would have taken every day the battlefield to fight against the Emperor. At that point, the Municipality chosed the weapons and the banner, and a ring was given in hand to each one of these men and they were recruited as Knights in the pay of the City, so that if anyone had fled he would have been rightly killed. Head of this company was Alberto da Giussano who got the banner of the City. Then came another company made of chosen soldiers on foot, for the custody of the Carroccio, and all of them swore they would rather die than flee from the battlefield. And three hundred battle wagons ("vessels") are manifactured and for each one there were six horses covered (by armour), dragging the vehicle. In every wagon there were ten men moving sickles to cut grass meadows, to cut hostiles as sailors move the oars: it was a terrible equipment against the enemies. (Galvano Fiamma, Chronica Galvanica cap. 291 f. 81v). Cunibertus (talk) 20:20, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Sources

Since we have a number of people lately requesting sources translated, and the current tag adds them to Category:Wikipedia articles needing translation, I've been bold and made Category:Sources needing translation and changed the tag--Jac16888Talk 21:37, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Tag for 'Translated pages that could still use some cleanup'

The instructions for this template say to simply insert {{cleanup-translation}} onto the page, but I later discovered that you actually need to put {{cleanup-translation|langauge}} replacing "langauge" with the actual name of the language. Does anyone know how to update the template instructions? And can they? Thanks JenLouise (talk) 07:39, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


Template:Duflu

Note, your template, {{Duflu}}, has been nominated for deletion. 65.94.71.179 (talk) 05:27, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Italian articles mass-imported & then abandoned

The following (unsourced) articles were imported from itwiki back in November and then apparently abandoned. Another editor {{db-foreign}}ed them. But somebody else replaced all of these templates with {{Expand Italian}} (redundant given that all the Italian content is already there). They're mostly lists of redlinks, so I don't know if they're worth keeping. I'm listing them here on talk initially as (i) I don't know if such imported pages belong here & (ii) I'm not sure how such a mass-list fits into this page's format.

HrafnTalkStalk(P) 17:00, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Note: I was told that they have been imported on behalf of Dr. Blofeld (talk · contribs), so I've already userfied two of the articles. De728631 (talk) 23:22, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Wasn't aware they still needed work. They should be restored asap and translated.♦ Dr. Blofeld 23:27, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

You said "They're mostly lists of redlinks, so I don't know if they're worth keeping". Ya ha. That's exactly why they need to be kept. This is a gaping hole in wikipedia's coverage. The article on politicians should be translated into english too.♦ Dr. Blofeld 23:28, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

When they're translated into english (at minimum -- they all appear to be unsourced and with little to no context) is when they should be in mainspace and not a moment sooner. Any eager translator can find them at the italian wikipedia (or better yet, start from scratch -- who knows if they're accurate? I sure don't).Bali ultimate (talk) 00:43, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
The correct procedure is detailed at WP:Translation, and it is not importing dozens of italian articles direct from the it:wiki and waiting for them to be translated by someone else--Jac16888Talk 00:48, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
I am a little bothered by what has been done here: in particular, i removed speedy tags from these articles, and they have none the less be reinserted. I did so because I thought them obviously worth the translation. (partly because, being composed mainly of name and titles, they are actually of use even in their untranslated form even to someone who does not know Italian. ) As an admin, I am not required to do a speedy deletion if I think it inappropriate. If ANYONE other than the original author removes a speedy tag, nobody is permitted to then speedy delete the article for the same reason, Bali, if you don't like it, take them to AfD. As for me, I see no purpose whatsoever in that speedy criterion & I am going to suggest removing it. DGG ( talk ) 01:30, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Parc_Jean-Jacques_Rousseau

Dear friends, I have copy pasted this from the French into EN:WP. I am in the process of translating it but it is part of a wider series of articles that I hope on the whole will make EN:WP better. If you see any RfDs or such like because it is mainly in French rather than English, can I please ask you to argue my case? It is very time consuming to tie them all back up together, many articles don't exist in WP:FR< I have some books and references but can't do it all at once. Of course I know in theory I should do it in user space and move it over but that is always tricky when one of the main problems is linking, cos then it is all in a different namespace.

Thank you for your consideration.

Si Trew (talk) 01:02, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

By argue my case I mean simply don't let it go CSD or AfD, as it would be time and trouble to argue it when I have enough trouble trying to pick the bones out of this one. I should have it done by the end of today but am very tired. If someone could cast an eye over René de Girardin I should be extremely grateful, it is all right but does need some help from another.
My sincere thanks, Si Trew (talk) 01:06, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
There is a proper procedure for doing this outlined at Wikipedia:Translation, and if you don't want to do it that way, then yes, you should be doing it in your userspace regardless of any trickyness with links, you can always simply use dead links now which will be live when the page is moved to articlespace--Jac16888Talk 01:28, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
Also, ensure you attribute the pages correctly, e.g. using Template:Translated page, otherwise it will be a copyright violation--Jac16888Talk 01:30, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
Thanks Jac yeah I'd forgotten yet to put the Translated Page tag on it. I'll do that now. And then continue with the translation. But it is going to take me a few hours (days, weeks) and it is not that I would take any personal offence to it being listed at AfD (CSD seems very unlikey come to think of it) more that it would waste other Wikipedian's time arguing it that could be better spent doing something else, in my humble opinion. Si Trew (talk) 09:02, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
By the way the article I mentioned René de Girardin is not a translation in the Wikipedian sense. I think it was written by somebody French who has good English as a second language but you know the grammar was rather upside down. So really more than anything that was a cleanupin the sense you use here at PNT, it is not a translation because there is no such article at WP:FR, or anything I can find similar that would be a good pair for it. That sounds a bit odd to me and someone more able than me might find one, I have tried my best with the usual suspects to find any article similar from French Wikipedia, but so far have failed. Si Trew (talk) 09:04, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
I do realise strictly speaking I should do it in user space. That is always a dilemma with me, because if it is a new article then it shouldn't even be being looked at by anyone in mainspace quite yet so it is just a balanced judgment that I took to do it in the mainspace itself, thinking it would do more good than harm at least people have a lead and some links to follow etc though the bulk is stilla at the moment in Frnech, which now I shall go and start to fix! Si Trew (talk) 09:12, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Gregor Dorfmeister/Manfred Gregor

This is the Google translation of a German Wikipedia bio of this writer, pen name Manfred Gregor. The Google translation of the article is not adequate, and needs more than I can offer. I think it would be a worthy addition to En.Wiki.

Gregor wrote three novels, two of which at least seem to be translated to English though maybe not widely, Die Brücke (The Bridge) and Town Without Pity. Town was made into a Kirk Douglas movie with a song of the same name recorded by Gene Pitney, Ronnie Montrose, and others. The Pitney version was featured in the movie Hairspray. The Bridge is an autobiographical account of forced youth service in Hitler army late in Second World War. The protagonist left a no-win situation while several of his fellows stayed and were killed. The writer suffered guilt and wrote the story. It was also made into a movie Die Brücke. The third and last novel is translated The Road or The Street, Die Straße in German. The three were written 1958-61.

The balance of the writer's career appears to have been in journalism.

I'd certainly work on the linking, and such expanding as I could, once a base was translated. I don't know about sources -- the German bio is thin, maybe none in-line, but I'd try. It seems he's a lasting contributor, is all. Please let me know if something happens. Is there a better way to make this request? Please let me know that, too. Thanks. Swliv (talk) 03:35, 24 March 2011 (UTC) Fleshed out a bit/minor edit: Swliv (talk) 03:20, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Translation for a more detailed response to your request, they are the ones in charge of such a project. This page is only for existing foreign-language articles that were accidently created on the English Wikipedia. A quick way of asking for a translation though is to create an English stub article and then place the {{Expand German}} template on it. De728631 (talk) 20:16, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks much. I think I'll try the quick way. Gregor Dorfmeister. Swliv (talk) 22:11, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Archival

It would be nice if someone could set up some kind of automated archiving of the translation requests. -- Ϫ 13:51, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Where to get a translation of just a few phrases?

I need to have the titles of French and Italian laws, mentioned in this article - Universal design#National_legislation, translated into English. It's only two phrases, one in each language, where/how do I request assistance with this? Roger (talk) 14:42, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Try the reference desk. —Кузьма討論 14:46, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
Thanks Roger (talk) 15:57, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Procedures

FYI, I have made some changes to Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English/Procedures to reflect current practices, [1], please feel free to change what I've written, or make further changes--Jac16888 Talk 11:01, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Machine translations

Since more and more users keep creating articles from other wikipedias using google translate I have come up with {{No-rough}} to post on their talk pages, perhaps we can try and stop people doing it--Jac16888 Talk 17:14, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Seems clear enough. Hopefully it'll help. Jarkeld (talk) 17:16, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
Forgot to add, feel free to make any changes to it if necessary--Jac16888 Talk 17:17, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
I reworded the message on the template. In particular, I took out "if you are not capable..." because it seems unnecessary to specify that when we just want to point out the machine translation issue. Laogeodritt [ Talk | Contribs ] 18:33, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

An unusual request for a Japanese translation

There's been a recent discussion at the talk page of the article for the Internet meme All your base are belong to us. The topic was made famous for the gruesome Engrish translations in the original video game, and the article provided a somewhat more accurate translation along the original text.

The discussion could benefit from a review of the accuracy of these translations as it appeared in this recent version, by someone with fluency in Japanese and experience dealing with editor-made translations at Wikipedia. Thanks for your time. Diego (talk) 17:36, 25 March 2012 (UTC) P.S. Should I list that article at the Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English#Translated pages that could still use some cleanup section? Is there any other Wikiproject that could deal with this translation issue? Diego (talk) 17:37, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

I've listed the page at the "cleanup" section over here. Let's see how that works out. As to other projects, WP:Translation is really only for importing and translating text from other Wikipedias but you should have a look at Wikipedia:Translators available and approach some of the Japanese experts. De728631 (talk) 19:37, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Repurposing Template:Translate

I'd like to change Template:Translate, which currently redirects to Template:Not English, into an updated and consolidated version of the Template:Expand language templates for translation requests. Please discuss at Wikipedia talk:Translation#Repurposing Template:Translate?. Thanks! Calliopejen1 (talk) 19:09, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

brianza

I cleaned the italian article "brianza" as much as I can. references are still not in line and it seems that there are too many "sources" listed; could still be placed in line or removed... --RichardMills65 (talk) 01:31, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

That's great Richard thank you for your help (although you can actually on comment on the appropriate section on the page, you didn't need to bring it here)--Jac16888 Talk 10:04, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Editors often take articles from foreign language WPs, run them through Google translate, and dump the result into the en WP. That is a violation of Google's copyright on the translation, isn't it? Shouldn't that be mentioned, and existing articles created from Google translate translations be deleted as copyright violations? El reggae (talk) 22:30, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Sadly that's not really the case, the copyright remains that of the original content so while technically those articles are a copyright violation of the other-language wikipedia, it only requires some form of attribution to the original source, such as in the edit summary or using {{Translated page}}--Jac16888 Talk 22:41, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
You miss my point. The authors of the foreign language WPs have copyright on the foreign language text and require some form of attribution. When doing dumping Google translate translations, additionally Google has a copyright on the translation, similar to the "Although faithful translations of public domain works, they each are protected by copyright." example in Wikipedia:FAQ/Copyright#Derivative works and these articles violate the copyright of Google, don't they? El reggae (talk) 23:08, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
If you can provide a more substantial rationale as to why an automatic translation made by a piece of software can have a copyright, I'll gladly discuss this further with our copyright specialuits. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:17, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
In page 20 of [2] an Attorney at Law claims that under current US copyright law machine translations are treated like translations made by humans. El reggae (talk) 23:52, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
A paper published by SSRN - a claim. Ketzan's 6 year old paper appears to be the only (online) claim of its kind. Evidence should be provided that this has been taken into law before we need to act on it in any way. Google is a huge organisaion with more lawyers on their staff than the sum total of employees at the Wikimedia Foundation. That said, if a machine translation were an infringement of Google's copyright, then it is almost certain that a caveat would be on the Google translation page such as: The use of any translation made by this feature is an infringement of Google copyright. I can't see one. In view of the exceptionally closse collaboration between the WMF and Google, it is equally certain that any such possible copyright infringement would have been addressed by the Foundation's legal department - copyright is a serious issue. My own take on this as a professional translator, and lexicographer for a publisher of dictionaries, is also that a machine translation can hardly be anyone's intellectual property any more than a basic dictionary corpus without the formatting for paper publication or electronic use. Words of a language are the property of mankind. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:21, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
  • "A paper published by SSRN - a claim." A claim by an Attorney at Law. Do you have any credible source claiming the opposite?
  • "then it is almost certain that a caveat would be on the Google translation page such as:" You don't have a lawyer's opinion, so you are guessing. Such a caveat is not required by law (copyright is automatic), and might not be desirable by Google for business reasons.
  • "copyright is a serious issue" If you were serious on that, then you would also be serious on your "I'll gladly discuss this further with our copyright specialuits" and get a qualified opinion now.
El reggae (talk) 07:31, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
All interesting points. I'll bring it up with Geoff Brigham, our chief attorney when I'm in DC next week - but please refrain form ordering us about, we are volunteers. That said, you could also bring this up with User:Mdennis (WMF), and you are welcome to quote me. I'm offline now until I arrive in the US. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:50, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
  • "I'll bring it up with Geoff Brigham, our chief attorney when I'm in DC next week" Thanks.
  • "but please refrain form ordering us about, we are volunteers." You were offering to discuss it with your copyright specialists if I'd provide a more substantial rationale, so I was disappointed when your answer sounded different after I gave you a more substantial rationale.
  • "you could also bring this up with User:Mdennis (WMF)" I pointed him at this discussion here.
El reggae (talk) 11:20, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
(outdent) In addition to my opinion here, I'll note that Mdennis is not a him but in fact a her, Maggie Dennis. Contrary to Kudpung's advice though, I would suggest contacting her at her alter ego, Moonriddengirl (talk · contribs), our longstanding and redoubtable volunteer copyright expert. It's a bit complicated (just like copyrights!), but Mdennis works for a company and has to do what the company pays her to do, whereas Moonriddengirl is a volunteer like all the rest of us. They are the same person, but it's actually MRG who is the "Queen of Copyright" around here :) Franamax (talk) 11:53, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
I'll just point out that the OP is probably referring not only to translations of articles from other Wikipedia projects, but to anything that may have been translated from another source. Whatever the solution is (derivative work or otherwise), I doubt very much that Google holds, or can hold, a copyright for the arbitrary production of machine translation software any more than the result in numbers from the use of an electronic calculator for which someone wrote the programme, or that Microsoft could claim copyright for a text someone used MS Word to write. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:48, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Opening sentence

The opening sentence of this page reads:

Wikipedia is written in English.

I think this is misleading as, although the list of foreign Wikipedias is mentioned in the next sentence, it seems to suggest that English is the only language in which Wikipedia is available. I therefore propose that it be changed to read:

This Wikipedia is written in English.

which is less general and makes it clear that there are Wikipedias in other languages.  ajmint  (talk • edits) 15:43, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Agree completely and I've already made the change, don't even remember that sentence being there--Jac16888 Talk 17:16, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Language crosslinking

I don't know if this is the right place to go - but could Centrum für Europäische Politik and its German equivalent [3] be 'linked together'.

Looking at the English article some 'comparing with the German and tweaking' is required. Jackiespeel (talk) 21:30, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

I've added the interwiki link and after checking that I don't really have the requisite knowledge of the field ("ordoliberal"?) I'll add it to teh list of translated pages needing further work. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:46, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

My German is 'holiday level' - but in some contexts the correct translation can be deduced for some 'creative mis-translation.'

Is there a better place to request language interlinkings? Jackiespeel (talk) 12:23, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

You should feel free to put them in yourself! Usually a bot does so if the link is present in the other direction, but it wasn't in this case. This is definitely the place to list something as being translated material in need of an expert eye. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:54, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Automated listing of translations

Would anyone be opposed to a bot that tags non-English new articles and lists them here? →Σσς. (Sigma) 21:34, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Wouldn't be opposed to it, but I don't think it's needed. I patrol new pages and keep an eye on this page, and fully non-English articles aren't created often enough that we can't take care of them manually. -- Patchy1 07:10, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Nanterre-Préfecture (Paris RER)

The initial language of this article was French. Suzukitaro (talk) 04:59, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

If you're unable to translate it properly yourself please follow the proper procedure described at Wikipedia:Translation. Doing it this way is a sure-fire way of making sure a poorly translated article will sit around for a long time - it's a lot harder to fix a bad translation than it is to translate in the first place--Jac16888 Talk 12:19, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
There are a lot more people who know how to fix grammar then there are people who can translate. By doing this first step, it becomes a good Wikipedia page faster.Whitebro (talk) 18:08, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
Wrong on all points, (if you want evidence you can just look at the fact that Category:Wikipedia articles needing cleanup after translation just keeps getting bigger and bigger). A) Fixing a bad translation involves a lot more than fixing grammar, for large articles it can be an exceptionally hard task. Don't believe me? Try it yourself. As a result we have B) Fixing bad translation is both difficult and time consuming, since everybody here is a volunteer, the number of people willing to take on unpleasant tasks is low, therefore instead of going from a very bad article to a very good article it just remains a very bad article indefinitely--Jac16888 Talk 18:19, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
A)Give me 3 articles that needing fixing and I will fix 1 of them to prove you wrong. B)The person translating the article should be able to choose which way they want to go about translating it. A person reverting edits shouldn't be deciding for the other person.Whitebro (talk) 18:02, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
You're just talking rubbish now - Any editor has the right to remove content which does not improve the project, thats all there is to it, if an editor is not doing things the way Wikipedia guidelines say they should (i.e. translating properly instead of just posting an unedited machine translation), then the whole point is that they are informed of their mistake and asked to fix it. Since you ask, here you go: Sutan Harhara, Toma T. Socolescu and Pham Ngoc Lan. Please tidy one of these as an exact translation, without removing any content--Jac16888 Talk 18:18, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
Ok I finished fixing up the Sutan Harhara page. Let me know how I did.Whitebro (talk) 01:31, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
You have fixed some of the grammar, but it is still a poorly translated article - try reading some of it out loud, it's full of broken sentences and poorly phrased sections and other such problems.--Jac16888 Talk 17:21, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
Chiming in here ... it's not just a matter of deleting versus keeping content; no editor gets to choose what happens to any article. If you want to translate something starting from a machine translation, do it in a word processor or a sandbox and mainspace it only when it's ready. The same as if you want to build an article slowly from scratch, writing sections one at a time. Once it's in main space, anyone can and should do anything they deem appropriate to make it better, and sadly that often means stubbing if it is an incomprehensible and/or inaccurate translation. I see you've already been given 3 articles, Whitebro; otherwise I was going to point out that I've fixed a bit of Aegidienberg but there is still plenty of badness there. Unfortunately, I don't think you realize that fixing a bad translation is quite a demanding task, in some ways harder than translating from scratch. It's not just adding endings to some words or choosing a more natural sounding synonym. Your user-page doesn't have any Babel userboxes on it; what languages can you read fluently? Any of the ones listed in this clean-up section? We do need help with this task ... Yngvadottir (talk) 18:30, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
The problem with using the sandbox approach is that if you take a whole day to translate an article and someone else adds, removes, or changes something during that time then you end up undoing what the other person did. That's why doing it in small parts is better.Whitebro (talk) 21:07, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
But what we have is Template:Being translated. If you use it on the article (and even work on it in a sandbox), I am quite sure no one will interfere as long as the template is on the article. Lectonar (talk) 21:12, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for letting me know about this. I will change how I go about doing the translations.Whitebro (talk) 21:55, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
Pls stop arguing, I will take care of the article, it is not really that long.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:13, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
 Done--Ymblanter (talk) 12:26, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
above content moved from main page --Jac16888 Talk 21:47, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Clarifying the text

Should the 'translate marker' be put on the language-to-be-translated-from article or the 'incoming translated to' page? (ie [4] or [5]? Jackiespeel (talk) 16:52, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

You use the expand tag on the incoming page, as shown here, and as described in the instructions here--Jac16888 Talk 18:18, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Where 'the explanations at the top' and 'the instructions for carrying out the action' are widely separated it can be useful to make things clear (Where is the selection of Murphy's laws covering the Wikiverse?) Jackiespeel (talk) 21:25, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Twinkle is here

This is just a courtesy notification: Twinkle is now able to automatically list a page here whenever a user tags it with the {{not English}} or {{rough translation}} maintenance tags. The feature can be turned off by the user on a case-by-case basis.

I probably should have asked here before implementing this change, because it will probably lead to a larger volume of requests here (although I expect they will almost entirely be good-faith requests by users who were previously unaware of this noticeboard). If you have any concerns about how this Twinkle feature is being used, please ask at WT:TW or my talk page. Thanks, — This, that and the other (talk) 09:52, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

General translation help (Japanese to English)

I like to write GA- and FA-quality articles, and occasionally I'll write about something from another language. At the moment, I'm wanting to write a full-length article about the new anime film The Garden of Words (see the trailer), similar to how I wrote the article for Hotarubi no Mori e. However, many of the reliable sources will be in Japanese, and I need help finding and translating them. I have made requests for help on the anime/manga wikiproject, but they usually go unanswered. Is there anyone who can help, or is there a better place to make a request? – Maky « talk » 14:35, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, if anyone can help or offer advice, please contact me on my talk page. – Maky « talk » 17:21, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

New discussion on Translation Templates at TfD

Hello, I thought my fellow translators might appreciate being informed about a new TfD discussion about the interwiki translation templates. - tucoxn\talk 20:28, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Pushpov at Grin Report

Sorry to bother you, I know you are busy people. I've PRODded Grin Report as in my opinion it exists solely to push the POV that Esperanto is widely used, and officially recognised, within the EU. The original article is in French and is purely an internal EU memorandum about how to communicate within the EU bureacracy to save translation costs, the first option is use only English, the third is use Esperanto as a lingua franca/interlingua.

To my eyes it is quite clearly pushpov, and I set out my boring points in far too much detail at Talk:Languages_of_the_European_Union#Esperanto, but I post here just in case some of you who are very competent with dealing with these kind of things would be interested. As it stands it is I think copyvio as being copied from the French Wikipedia (at fr:Grin Report), and it needs cleanup as it is not very good English.

I did assume good faith when I started a minor CE on the article Languages of the EU some time this morning, but the more I looked at this, the more it seemed like a pushpov.

Quite happy for you to ignore it, but I'm just doing my best to let interested parties know. Si Trew (talk) 15:51, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

FYI not copyvio, or only trivially so (need to satisfy attribution clause?), as the French Wikipedia is under a permissive license (GFDL or CC-BY-SA 3.0). Laogeodritt [ Talk | Contribs ] 17:12, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
I agree; it's borderline, and tempted though I was I didn't mark it as copyvio. PNT used to have a thing saying you must mark your translations as copied from such-and-such WP to satisfy the GNU licence, and I came here to find it but I couldn't find it. Copyvios are taken fairly seriously as I know, and on the whole it's better to err on the side of caution (mark copyvio if unsure), but I thought it was pretty borderline. I think I added {{translated page|fr}} into the talk page just to clear the copyvio, but I didn't want to appear to be kinda pushing my own POV after I'd marked it PROD, so may not have done. I can't be sure it's a translation from FR:WP, it just looks like it to me– hence asking others' help.
Best wishes. Si Trew (talk) 20:31, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Another section for non-English sections?

I'm looking at the current entries WP:PNT#Real estate in Puerto Rico and WP:PNT#Giorgos Konstantinou, which may sit there indefinitely if no one translates the non-English parts of those mostly-English articles, and thinking it might be useful to wedge between "pages for consideration" and the "cleanup" section a new one for pages like these, with a separate set of policies/procedures. For example, PRODding after X days doesn't apply, but should the section be summarily deleted after some period of time? Your thoughts? —Largo Plazo (talk) 15:29, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

I get what you mean, but I think it would confuse the page a bit to be honest to seperate the page again as I don't think this is a common enough issue. I tend to remove content such as that after a few months of being untranslated, if nobody gets to it first. I know some editors in the past have moved such listings to the clean-up section, although I would prefer not to make that one bigger if possible. I suppose it depends on the article, for example of the two currently listed the real estate one is a particularly difficult one to resolve as the Spanish is woven into the article whereas the Giorgos I'd be tempted to just remove the tag - it's film titles where translation is requested, and I'm not sure it actually needs it--Jac16888 Talk 17:32, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

An unrealistic proposal

Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but it looks to me as if the backlog of this list may be shrinking. There may not be many people working here, but they do really great work (they know who they are, I won't try to name them for fear of missing one). I'd like to make a totally unrealistic proposal: how about aiming to clear the rest of the backlog, by say (getting even more unrealistic here) the end of January? I sort of think that with a combination of dedicated hard work on the articles that are of genuinely high value to the project (say, Berber music or Casa Milà) and controlled but determined ruthlessness towards those that are not (which in my opinion would include stuff like Bible translations into Norwegian), that goal might be achievable. I'm prepared to make the attempt if others think it's worth a try. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 03:41, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't think it's possible to be honest, there just isn't the motivation to help from enough editors. It is going down, part of that is lately I've been going through all of them, tidying the small/easy ones and detagging those that don't need it, and as you said there are a few others making a genuine effort as well - the problem is that ones being left tagged are the ones that are very difficult, or just really really long. It's a nice idea, but unless we can get a lot more editors involved (and believe me I've tried), this will also be a backlog that just gets chipped away at--Jac16888 Talk 22:46, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
You may be right. I have an idea for the ones that are just very long: a well-sharpened axe. If the aim is to (re-)translate into readable English every scrap of mis-translation that gets listed here, then I fully agree that there's no hope. If the aim is transform some of these things into useful articles in the wiki then some tough love may be needed, but I see it as an achievable goal. That's based on my personal view that an article does not have to be long to be useful - indeed, a short article is more likely to attract new editors. Anyway, I'm up for it if others want to give it a try. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:07, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
The axe is of course a very useful tool, once I've used myself many a times, but sometimes it's not actually the best option. A massive block of directly machine translated content, yeah nuke it, but to use your example of Bible translations in Norway - this is not a poor article by any description as clearly attempts have been made to translate properly/tidy up afterwards leaving an article of fairly poor english, but one which is still largely understandable - it could be tidied by somebody with little language ability, the issue is the massive amount of time it would take to actually do so is very offputting--Jac16888 Talk 23:22, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
Well, we don't fully agree on that article. I'm with you that it isn't poor - it's almost too rich; but in my opinion it's a very bad article because it does not present the topic in a comprehensible manner. It's also completely unreferenced (it has one dead link and a lot of page references to source which is not specified anywhere in the article). Whole pages-worth of text have not one single citation. My proposal is to prune it, carefully but hard, and see if it will then bear some fruit. The creator of the article just dumped it here for us to deal with and has done nothing whatsoever since to improve it. Ah, yes, the axe can be seen as a terminal solution as well as one for cutting out the dead wood; I'm proposing the latter approach. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:52, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
I wasn't really referring to the content of the article, rather the text itself - the translation is poor, but not so bad that it is unintelligible (Unsourced/unneeded content is another issue altogether, we whould remove it when we can but it is not the primary focus here). To use another example Zbrašov aragonite caves has text that is not well translated, but readable enough that removing it altogether would be a detriment rather than an improvement.
Going to invite a few other PNT regulars to weigh in on this and hopefully we can get something going (tag more if I've missed anyone), User:Ymblanter, User:Largoplazo, User:De728631, User:Yngvadottir, User:Peridon, User:Carson32, any thoughts on bringing down this backlog?--Jac16888 Talk 18:19, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
We have two distinct sections in this page: Pages for consideration and Translated pages that could still use some cleanup. Both are backlogged. Which one are we discussing?--Ymblanter (talk) 18:33, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
Clean-up, the non-translated pages are, in my opinion, a much smaller issue (and a considerably smaller backlog)--Jac16888 Talk 18:36, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
I have been slowly working on Kristiansand as my unofficial contribution to this drive, but I have limited time and really don't want to do Bible translations in Norway - I avoid topics like that (and am not hugely competent in Norwegian - the geology in the Kristiansand article could undoubtedly use further tweaks). On balance, I don't think I see much utility to an organised backlog-clearing drive: from the speed of existing responses I suspect others with the necessary expertise are as busy as I am, these tasks tend to be slow, and there's a risk of discouraging editors from tagging bad translations because they don't want to add more tasks to a heap we are visibly trying to diminish, whereas I see the greater need as being encouraging such tagging. Which is not to diminish the need to get them done ... but I still see articles nominated for deletion because they are in a foreign language, and I still occasionally run across terrible translations, and getting both groups reported so the problem can be fixed is more important in my view. Yngvadottir (talk) 18:46, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
Part of the trouble is that the untranslated articles are more fun in terms of working out what they are written in, and what they are about. The tidy-up is slog, and takes more expertise. I did manage to retranslate most of an article about a Belgian furniture maker, but after I'd left it for about a month or three it seemed to disappear (I couldn't remember what it was called..). Some of the stuff in the tidy-up section doesn't require much work, but does require a speaker of the language. Could we all try to encourage speakers of other languages to help out now and then? I've got someone in mind for Serbian (and probably Croatian and Bosnian too). Some stuff just isn't worth the effort, and there could be a tag for this with a timer on like prod and prod-BLP have - but give them 12 months. If no-one has bothered in that time, no-one probably will. Ever. Not everything that passes GNG really IS notable. If this seems a bit disjointed, it's 'cos I'm commenting off the top of my head (before I go off my head after moving over to another part of the camp field with some mulled wine, beer and nibbles). Happy New Year, folks... Five hours to go here. (_)? Cheers! 8-) Peridon (talk) 19:12, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Эўро

This is up for discussion at WP:RFD and we are having trouble identifying it. Presumably it is a transliteration of "Euro" but we don't know what language it is from and it is too short for the automated language identifiers to find it. My initial guess was Belarussian but that seems to be incorrect. If anyone could help that would be great. The discussion is here.

Si Trew (talk) 21:18, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

What to do if a translation is not worth doing

I have just looked at Sonop Tehuis which is listed here as needing translation from Afrikaans. I am fluent in Afrikaans. The article has no chance of surviving on en.WP if it were to be translated - it has zero reliable sources. The article is simply fancruft about a university residence ("dorm" in American). I commented at the list entry here and tagged the page itself for speedy deletion using criteria I think are appropriate, but is there a specific procedure for declining translation? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 10:49, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

  • Tagging it for deletion is a good start and what I do with Indonesian-language articles that wouldn't survive here. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 11:51, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
  • Speedy deletion criteria are applicable in the same way as if an article were written in English. (If the justification for speedy deletion wouldn't be readily discernible just by using Google Translator, you can post a deletion rationale on the article's Talk page.) You can also check criteria A2 (pretty much the same article exists on another language's Wikipedia) and A10 (typically involves someone translating an article that was already here in English into another language). Otherwise, there's no procedure for "declining translation". Just let the article sit for two weeks and, if no one has translated it, it will then be proposed for deletion and gone in another week. —Largo Plazo (talk) 15:58, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Albanian

I'm puzzled by the rash of articles, all by different users, in Albanian. Any clues? I'm wondering whether some Albanian or Kosovar university professor has assigned a class project and didn't clarify that the students should be using Albanian Wikipedia. —Largo Plazo (talk) 15:33, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Yeah I think that's what is happening here. Hopefully after we delete a few more someone will come to us and we can get a dialog going--Jac16888 Talk 22:15, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
Bingo, I think: User talk:EmineMurati#Response to your comment on the article's Talk page. —Largo Plazo (talk) 11:13, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
It's becoming annoying, too. I just zapped a copyvio of what looked like a machine translation from one English website to Albanian. De728631 (talk) 20:40, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
Yeah, the uvulitis one. Whatever the teacher's teaching his students about Wikipedia, it isn't about how to contribute articles to it correctly. —Largo Plazo (talk) 21:21, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

DRAFTspace?

[6] has several non-English draft articles, some have already been rejected by WP:AFC due to being not English. Should any of this be listed here? Is there a transwiki noticeboard to ask these be moved to a different Wikipedia? Or is there a speedy deletion criterion to deal with these? -- 65.94.169.222 (talk) 08:40, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Change to a major template

I just edited {{notenglish}} to place a {{noindex}} on the page that carries it. My reasoning is explained at Template talk:Not English#Noindex. Please comment there if you disagree, or if I screwed it up. Thanks, Oiyarbepsy (talk) 05:22, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Expand French |topic=mil

I'd like to add a switch to this template so that |topic=mil goes to Category:Military articles needing translation from French Wikipedia. A lot of military articles are already so classified (e.g. 3rd Army Corps (France). However I can't do so, because the template is fully protected (why?)

I left a message to this effect on the template's talk page on 24 October 2014 but nothing has come of it. Could anyone here do it? It would seem uncontroversial. Si Trew (talk) 08:50, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

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