Manual talk:Language

Planning updates to this and related docs

Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion

As part of work on the mw:Developer_Advocacy/Developer_Portal, I've been reviewing this page and identifying ways to improve its utility as a landing page / entry point into the localisation / i18n docs. If you're interested in contributing to or staying updated about this work, please reach out or follow https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T293776 TBurmeister (WMF) (talk) 14:59, 17 November 2021 (UTC)Reply

-- I have now moved content from this page to subpages as outlined in T293776; it's the end of the working day for me now but tomorrow I will review all these changes more closely to try to correct broken links and anchors, and fix other nuances that these major content moves may have made problematic. TBurmeister (WMF) (talk) 22:47, 9 December 2021 (UTC)Reply

Language preset question

Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hello, I have changed my language present in an wikinet page to 'fr', now I can't change it back like before even click on reset "Restaurer toutes les valeurs par défaut". What should I do now, please tell me? Maraschino912 (talk) 08:32, 5 December 2012 (UTC)Reply

Customizing language names

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

How can be a language name be changed in LocalSettings.php ? Example: in Names.php 'es' is named as 'español' and I want it to be 'castellano'. --Actiuinformatica (talk) 07:35, 26 July 2019 (UTC)Reply

Draft of proposed sub-section of "User interface language"

Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Starting a new localisation for the user interface

Current languages

All languages with a live interface at MediaWiki have a MessagesZxx.php file - see also Localisation_statistics. If your language is not listed then either:

it has not yet been enabled for translation (not listed on supported languages (meaning enabled and supported by at least 1 human translator) or languages without translators (only some of these are enabled), or
it has been enabled but only a few messages have been translated (see translation statistics^[1]). When 18% of the core messages have been translated (roughly equivalent to all the most used messages), then the Language.php file is created at MediaWiki and message export begins, or
it has been disabled (see list).

Policy for starting a new user interface localisation

Localisation of the user interface is done at translatewiki.net. New languages are accepted for localisation at translatewiki.net as long as:

the language is included in the latest standard issued by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO). At September 2013 the latest standard is ISO 639-3.
there should be at least one person willing to translate into the language^[2].

If you wish to localise a language which is not eligible for inclusion on translatewiki.net, then you could choose to set up a new wiki, set up to use your preferred language code as its main language.

Process for starting a new user interface localisation

Instructions for enabling a new language for localisation at Mediawiki.org are on translatewiki.net. After being enabled the work of translating messages and other items (via Special:AdvancedTranslate) can begin. You will not be able to see the interface in the new language, either on translatewiki.net or on other wikis, until the number of messages translated exceeds the export threshold for MediaWiki (see above). At that point a LanguageZxx.php and MessagesZxx.php file are created at MediaWiki.org and this is made available in the next MediaWiki version update. Once the MessagesZxx.php is in MediaWiki core, new messages are exported from translatewiki.net every few days, and can be updated onto any wiki using the LocalisationUpdate extension (automatic for all Wikimedia wikis).

Notes

↑ Some languages were enabled before an export threshold was introduced.
↑ Some languages were enabled before this policy was adopted, leading to some anomolies.

Draft for comments Lloffiwr (talk) 19:26, 1 September 2013 (UTC)Reply