How MediaWiki's interface is translated?

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Interface translations?

This page covers the case of MediaWiki's interface translations. Wikipedia article translations (see Content translation) or Mediawiki's documentation (see Help:Extension:Translate) are not interface translations.

How to add a new language?

See: Manual:Adding and removing languages

How to translate the interface?

All Mediawiki interface elements are translated at translatewiki.net.

This website requires a different account than your Wikimedia account.

Deployment process

The flow is:

1. Translatable interface messages are added to the code by developers through Wikimedia Gerrit
2. The new or updated source messages are imported to translatewiki.net three times per day
   • caveat: a single volunteer reviews the changes manually, which may add delays. A process to automate it is in progress
   • For things outside Wikimedia Gerrit, the process is semi-automated imports every 2 hours, automated exports on Mondays and Thursdays.ref
3. Volonteers at Translatewiki translate the existing messages
4. Translatewiki bundles up any changes for that extensions messages and puts it into a commit, that’s submitted to the repository
5. That commit goes out with the next deployment train
   • The train is built on Monday, to be out to wikis by Thursday
   • Hence, the deadline to submit an interface translation is on Sunday.

Can't wait for the train?

Interface administrators can change any MediaWiki message locally. This can be done if a message must be updated before its deployment through the train, but the temporary message has to be deleted when the centralized message is available.

Local edit of MediaWiki messages, done by communities, are frequent. Check on the history page of a message to see why and when this change was made.