Manual:$wgInterwikiMagic

Language, regional and character encoding settings: $wgInterwikiMagic
Treat language links as magic connectors, not inline links.
Introduced in version:Before 1.1.0
Removed in version:Still in use
Allowed values:(boolean)
Default value:true

Details

Treat language links as magic connectors (interlanguage links), not inline links. If $wgInterwikiMagic is set to true and $wgHideInterlanguageLinks is set to false, interlanguage links (e.g. fr:La Foo) will show up in the sidebar.

An interwiki link is considered a language link if the interwiki prefix matches a MediaWiki language code, or if the prefix is present in $wgExtraInterlanguageLinkPrefixes .

On talk pages, interlanguage links are always parsed as inline links regardless of this setting.