translatewiki.net, formerly named Betawiki, is a

web-based A web application (or web app) is application software that is accessed using a web browser. Web applications are delivered on the World Wide Web to users with an active network connection. History In earlier computing models like client-serve ...

translation Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transla ...

platform powered by the Translate extension for

MediaWiki MediaWiki is a free and open-source wiki software. It is used on Wikipedia and almost all other Wikimedia websites, including Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata; these sites define a large part of the requirement set for MediaWi ...

. It can be used to translate various kinds of texts but is commonly used for creating localisations for software interfaces. It has about 15,000 translators and over 100,000 messages to translate from over 50 projects including

, OpenStreetMap, Mifos,

Encyclopedia of Life The ''Encyclopedia of Life'' (''EOL'') is a free, online encyclopedia intended to document all of the 1.9 million living species known to science. It is compiled from existing trusted databases curated by experts and with the assistance of ...

and MantisBT.

Features

Translatewiki.net is a

wiki A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pub ...

and so has a relatively low barrier to entry., post for 6th birthday. Translations are synchronised between a

version control In software engineering, version control (also known as revision control, source control, or source code management) is a class of systems responsible for managing changes to computer programs, documents, large web sites, or other collections o ...

system and translatable wiki pages. For MediaWiki on

Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. Best know ...

projects, new localisations may reach live sites within a day. The translation editor provides various features for machine-assisted translation, such as *message documentation, also known as "context", *suggestions from a

text corpus In linguistics, a corpus (plural ''corpora'') or text corpus is a language resource consisting of a large and structured set of texts (nowadays usually electronically stored and processed). In corpus linguistics, they are used to do statistical ...

and

machine translation Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the abbreviation MT (not to be confused with computer-aided translation, machine-aided human translation or interactive translation), is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates t ...

, *checking translations for common syntax mistakes, *translation status of messages. Translatewiki.net is also a

Semantic MediaWiki Semantic MediaWiki (SMW) is an extension to MediaWiki that allows for annotating semantic data within wiki pages, thus turning a wiki that incorporates the extension into a semantic wiki. Data that has been encoded can be used in semantic search ...

, part of the semantic web.

History

Translatewiki.net was made available by Niklas Laxström as localisation platform for all languages of

around June 2006. Besides translation, it was developed with the characteristics of an

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source code editor, build automation tools ...

for MediaWiki (Nukawiki in 2005), with a focus on improvement of

internationalisation In economics, internationalization or internationalisation is the process of increasing involvement of enterprises in international markets, although there is no agreed definition of internationalization. Internationalization is a crucial strateg ...

features. At the end of 2007 Siebrand Mazeland joined the management of the website, which was moved to the current domain . In April 2008, it already supported over 100 languages for MediaWiki and 200 of its extensions, "making it one of the most translated software projects ever", as well as FreeCol. Since then, while being an independent volunteer project, it has been recognised as a major player in the global success of MediaWiki and the

Wikimedia The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. Best know ...

projects powered by it, like

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...

, in over 280 languages. In 2009 it was improved by a

Google Summer of Code The Google Summer of Code, often abbreviated to GSoC, is an international annual program in which Google awards stipends to contributors who successfully complete a free and open-source software coding project during the summer. , the program is ...

project by Niklas Laxström. In 2011 proofreading features were introduced. In 2012, its translation memory engine expanded to all Wikimedia projects using Translate. In 2013, the Translate platform underwent a major revamp through the "Translate User eXperience" project, or "TUX", including "changes in navigation, editor look and feel, translation area, filters, search, and color & style".

Supported formats

Some of the natively supported formats follow. More can be added with some customisation. *

interface and pages *

GNU Gettext In computing, gettext is an internationalization and localization (i18n and l10n) system commonly used for writing multilingual programs on Unix-like computer operating systems. One of the main benefits of gettext is that it separates programmi ...

* Java properties * Android string resources * INI * Dtd * PHP files *

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...

* JSON * PythonSingle *

YAML YAML ( and ) (''see '') is a human-readable data-serialization language. It is commonly used for configuration files and in applications where data is being stored or transmitted. YAML targets many of the same communications applications as Ext ...

XLIFF XLIFF (XML Localization Interchange File Format) is an XML-based bitext format created to standardize the way localizable data are passed between and among tools during a localization process and a common format for CAT tool exchange. The XLIFF T ...

(partial, in beta) *

AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactur ...

br>i18n bundle

Notable uses

and MediaWiki extensions * FreeCol * OpenStreetMap *

* MantisBT * FUDforum * Wikipedia mobile apps * pywikibot *

Etherpad Etherpad (previously known as EtherPad) is an open-source, web-based collaborative real-time editor, allowing authors to simultaneously edit a text document, and see all of the participants' edits in real-time, with the ability to display each ...

Kiwix Kiwix is a free and open-source offline web browser created by Emmanuel Engelhart and Renaud Gaudin in 2007. It was first launched to allow offline access to Wikipedia, but has since expanded to include other projects from the Wikimedia Foundati ...

* Gentoo Linux documentation *

KDE KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that allow collaborative work on this kind of software. Well-known products include the ...

documentation *

website *

Joomla Joomla (), also spelled Joomla! (with an exclamation mark) and sometimes abbreviated as J!, is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) for publishing web content on websites. Web content applications include discussion forums, ...

documentation * Pandora documentation *

Simple Machines Forum Simple Machines Forum (SMF) software is an open-source web application that provides Internet forum and message board services. It is developed by Simple Machines. The name reflects the creator's initial goal of providing a website that could b ...

documentationTranslation Portal
wiki.simplemachines.org.

References

External links

* * MediaWiki Translate extension page and documentation * MediaWiki translatewiki.net * category:multilingual websites category:software-localization tools category:translation databases category:semantic wikis category:MediaWiki websites category:MediaWiki category:free software programmed in PHP category:articles containing video clips {{lowercase title