Which language to be used inside of the wiki?!?

Post by **simonsunnyboy** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 4:29 pm

We now have some articles in french in there but they are NOT useful that way as most Atarians do not speak french. I personally have nothing against original documents but it would be very useful if someone could translate the non-english docs in future so that everyone can take advantage from the Wiki contents...

aktiv8 · Post by **aktiv8** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 8:49 pm

Like Sunnyboy, I have nothing against original documents, but I know there is a lot of information out there in French and German that would be worth translating if anyone can do it...

I think we need to focus on English for the site at the first level since as Simon points out, it's what most of us speak, and are typing here!

Perhaps maybe worth getting the documents up on the Wiki and adding teh translated version as and when people offer

MadDonna · Post by **MadDonna** » Sat Jul 08, 2006 11:56 am

I agree that documents about Atari subjects, written by forum members, must be as much as possible in the English language, but I think it is wrong to ask to do it in English only. For us, the non-native English speakers, it can be simply impossible to do it in English only. What you will see in pieces where I am the autor, is something like this:

Code: Select all

English blah, more english blah, blah blah blah blah, technical english blah
[dutch]
Nederlandse blah veel meer Nederlandse blah, technisch nederlandse blah
[/dutch]
[german]
Deutches blah, Deutscheres blah, technisches blah über technische Themen, blah blah blah
[/german]
[french]
blah technique au sujet des sujets techniques
[/french]

That makes it also interesting for people who have not to much documentation or other information to participate in the wiki, simply because they can translate those pieces to the english language.

And writting your pieces first in your native language and then translating them speeds up the proces and prevents that [translate by babelfish because I did not knew the words in English]writing becomes an impregnable treshold.[/translate by babelfish because I did not knew the words in English]

but also I think that every Atari, printed, document must be added to the Atari Wiki, no matter which language.

I think that the base purpose is not that you can read it, but that you have it, because if you don't have it, the change that you lose it and not available in the English language is too big. Don't forget that the German language was, at least in the 90's, the main language. Every screenshot in a magazine I saw about interesting programs where German screenshots. I have at least 30 books about Atari in the German language, ten or twelf books in my own language. The only books/leaflets I have in the English language are deliverd by the producer itself.

My personal opinion of a wiki is that you can find everything on that subject.[/code]

Post by **Mug UK** » Sat Jul 08, 2006 7:55 pm

I've not got enough experience of a Wiki to set up the languages .. do we just link a page to the English, German and Dutch versions and it sorts it all out or is there a special set of commands to signify a different language?

bodkinz · Post by **bodkinz** » Sat Jul 08, 2006 9:49 pm

Mug, any way of getting in touch with the people who did Wikipedia? i'm sure they have a lot of knowledge about such things... just a thought

Post by **Mug UK** » Sat Jul 08, 2006 10:27 pm

To be honest, I leave that side of things up to Silver Surfer if stuff needs installing.

The only source reference I've seen is by looking at other Wiki's to see how they've done their pages. Which explains why ours looks more than a little basic at the moment

It's crying out for a "insert neat table here" button

MadDonna · Post by **MadDonna** » Sat Jul 08, 2006 11:48 pm

muguk wrote:I've not got enough experience of a Wiki to set up the languages .. do we just link a page to the English, German and Dutch versions and it sorts it all out or is there a special set of commands to signify a different language?

No that is not what I ment. I ment that some of us are not able to write there knowledge down in the english language. Sometimes I don't know the correct words and I know that other people know those words. So what I propose is that if a not native english speaking person write about a subject and he is not able to find the correct words he does it like this:

Objects

Most items on the GEM [dutch]bureaublad[/dutch], including menus, alerts, and [dutch]zelfs[/dutch] windows are organized as object [dutch]bomen[/dutch]

You see three Dutch words, bureaublad (= desktop), zelfs (= even) and bomen (= trees) not translated, people who are authors on the wiki and who are capable of translating Dutch into English see those words and translate them. As result:

Most items on the GEM desktop, including menus, alerts, and even windows are organized as object trees.
What you get now is that not knowing the language 100% will never be a n obstacle to write down your knowledge, because you are sure that there are enough that can translate it for you, and after that someone native english can correct the story grammaticly.

Post by **Mug UK** » Sun Jul 09, 2006 12:22 am

Ah right I get you .. sorry! That's a damn good idea. Maybe add a reference near the top of any similar page stating that it's "in mid-translation between English and xxxx language"?

Post by **simonsunnyboy** » Sun Jul 09, 2006 8:24 am

Yeah like MadDonna said, there is nothing wrong with writing down in native tongue but it should be translated by one who understands and who is firm enough in english sooner or later.

Original doc: ....

Translation: ....

And the translation can be incomplete ofcourse but as as long as a strating point is there it can help alot.

Desty · Post by **Desty** » Sun Apr 22, 2007 1:09 pm

Oldish thread, but surely it should be done the way Wikipedia does it.
You add a doc in whatever language, but register which language it is. There's a list of available languages in a column on the left side of the screen. If you're reading in language XYZ, clicking a document link will by default take you to the XYZ language version if available, and if you want to switch to another language, you click on one of the options on the left.

example...

In wikipedia, if a document exists but not in the language you're currently viewing, the link simply won't be a link... but it would probably be better if it just appended the link with "[note: not yet available in XYZ]" so you could still see the doc in whatever language, or maybe it would take you to an edit page.

rb · Post by rb » Mon Apr 23, 2007 10:32 pm

Wikipedia uses a different database and server for each language. Mediawiki is not able to handle more than one language. If you look at the links of wikipedia they always start with en. de. it. ... to link to the appropriate server.

What you see on the left side are only interwiki liks that have been created by wiki code, i.e. [[de:London]][[fr:Londres]] and so on.
Mediawiki looks up the links to the main page of other language servers in the table interwiki, and makes those links available on the left side panel if it can find the link in the database and if the language settings allows to do it.

So you may as well forget different languages, unless atari forum is willing to provide wikis for Englis, French, German, Dutch etc. something I seriously doubt.

Desty · Post by **Desty** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 10:38 pm

rb wrote:Mediawiki looks up the links to the main page of other language servers in the table interwiki, and makes those links available on the left side panel if it can find the link in the database and if the language settings allows to do it.

Could it not be configured to use some local path system in this language database instead of external servers? That would make more sense, surely.

Post by **Mug UK** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 11:04 pm

Silver Surfer was messing around with this over the weekend - as well as installing the full Help files for MediaWiki to make it easier for us all to add more pages.

The perfect example is the Blitter Manual - it's in English and in French on the Wiki.

More news when Silver Surfer has got it I guess as he wants to practice first.

rb · Post by rb » Mon Apr 23, 2007 11:07 pm

No, not really. How would the wiki know what language an article belongs to if you had only one database? Articles belong to a namespace (main, tlka, image etc) but not to a specific language.

Unfortunately, the only way to allow more than one language is to have a database for each of them as well as different "entry" points, i.e. servers, like wikipedia has, and they should know what they are doing.

Post by **Mug UK** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 11:09 pm

Oh .. that's my hopes dashed then

Ah well. Thought it'd be a lot easier to support multiple languages than how it is.

rb · Post by rb » Mon Apr 23, 2007 11:16 pm

well someone could add a new column "language" to the page db table and change more or less every single php file that accesses the db. Such a customized version would possibly allow for different languages by adding an additional parameter: something like //wiki/index.php?language=en;title=Atari_ST or //wiki/en_index.php?title=Atari_ST.
However, this would keep someone busy for quite some time

Post by **Silver Surfer** » Tue Apr 24, 2007 1:20 pm

Ouch! I think I'll pass on that one!

What me and Muggie were discussion was a solution like on the MediaWiki page http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Contents If you notice the language link, they seem to use templates for this. I am not exactly sure how it's done as I haven't had time to really delve into it but it could prove useful for us, right?

rb · Post by rb » Tue Apr 24, 2007 6:31 pm

Oh I see...

But this is not quite the same as a multilingual wiki with language links on the left panel.

It shouldn't be too difficult to do such a template, providing v1.6 is up to the job.

Howver, it would not prevent the random page selector from picking a page in any language but i guess people can live with that.

Could you point me to an article that exists in at least two languages? I might have a go at such a template when I get a minute or two

Post by **Mug UK** » Tue Apr 24, 2007 10:36 pm

We (as before) hand over the Wiki to those who know a helluva lot more than myself & Silver Surfer do

Post by **Silver Surfer** » Wed Apr 25, 2007 11:53 am

The only articles I can think of are

http://www.atari-forum.com/wiki/index.p ... ter_manual

http://www.atari-forum.com/wiki/index.p ... du_BLITTER

But they don't seem to correspond, I don't understand French very well (actually I don't understand it at all) so we probably need someone who understands French to tell us about that.

You could always create stubs.

Look at this:

http://www.ko-gathering.com/wiki/index. ... :Main_Page

This seem like a slightly different solution or am I mistaken?

rb · Post by rb » Wed Apr 25, 2007 4:13 pm

OK. A stub page is simply an unfinished artcile, a page you started so that someone incl. yourself may improve it. Wikipedia has them all over the places. So stubs have nothing to do with multilanguage pages.

The language template you pointed to works like so:

The base page in English is called "Blitter manual" and all translations of this page would take the corresponding language code as extension:

Blitter manual/fr --> for French
Blitter manual/de --> for German
etc.

So all the template is doing is to append "/" + language code to the base page code and creates a link to the translation.

rb · Post by rb » Wed Apr 25, 2007 4:38 pm

Alright, I have added the missing template to get the languages template working.

However the template uses a magic word BASEPAGENAME which was introduce in version 1.7 of MediaWiki. So, in order to see anything happening PHP5 has to be installed and a newer version of MediaWiki

Post by **Silver Surfer** » Wed Apr 25, 2007 4:57 pm

rb wrote:OK. A stub page is simply an unfinished artcile, a page you started so that someone incl. yourself may improve it. Wikipedia has them all over the places. So stubs have nothing to do with multilanguage pages.

Yes, sorry I was trying to suggest creating stubs as a substitute for complete articles as we don't have many articles that appear in multiple languages. Upon re-reading my last post I clearly see it is a very confusing post.

Post by **Mug UK** » Wed Apr 25, 2007 5:07 pm

rb wrote:Alright, I have added the missing template to get the languages template working.

Nice one sir. You are the wiz with these templates

rb wrote:However the template uses a magic word BASEPAGENAME which was introduce in version 1.7 of MediaWiki. So, in order to see anything happening PHP5 has to be installed and a newer version of MediaWiki

Oh .. bad news for us as the server (from memory) isn't upgraded to PHP5 as of yet - it's due to happen though from the same conversation with Silver Surfer last week.

Post by **Silver Surfer** » Wed Apr 25, 2007 6:38 pm

rb wrote:Alright, I have added the missing template to get the languages template working.

However the template uses a magic word BASEPAGENAME which was introduce in version 1.7 of MediaWiki. So, in order to see anything happening PHP5 has to be installed and a newer version of MediaWiki

I back ported the BASEPAGENAME & BASEPAGENAMEE portions of the 1.7 code but it still isn't working.

Maybe I need to fiddle with the config file too? Gonna have a look at that now.