Tips for translators

From WikiMapia

This page is for translators of this wiki. For information about translating the Wikimapia interface see User Guide: Languages.

Contents 1 Use your watchlist 2 Translate Main Page first 3 Translate the essential templates second 4 Then translate... 5 Place of the day

[edit] Use your watchlist

Each time you translate a page, click on the source language's "watch" tab. Then make it a daily habit to view your watchlist ("my watchlist" at top right). That way you will easily and promptly notice any changes that are made to the source page.

[edit] Translate Main Page first

1. Select the "edit" tab on Main Page.
2. Click anywhere in the text.
3. Ctrl-A to select all.
4. Ctrl-C to copy.
5. Select the "page" tab.
6. Click on your target language's red link in the language box at the top of the page.
7. You should now be in an edit window. If not, select the page's edit tab.
8. Ctrl-V to paste.
9. Carefully translate all text strings while leaving the markup (coding) untouched.
10. At the POTD template, change "lang=en" to "lang=xx" where xx is your target language's ISO 639-1 code.

[edit] Translate the essential templates second

The naming convention is "Template:<english name> xx" where xx is your target language's ISO 639-1 code.

The essential templates are:

• Template:Tnavbar
• Template:Main Page NavBox
• Template:Internal links NavBox
• Template:FullUserGuideNavbox
• Template:POTD text en
• Template:Potd/name/en

If you discover any others that are missing from this list please add them.

[edit] Then translate...

1. Quick start guide
2. Menu bar quick reference
3. Official Wikimapia FAQ
4. Full user guide and reference
5. WikiMapia wiki help

The naming convention for translated page's is the pages name in the target language.

If it happens that your target languages would naturally use a name that has already been used by another language, disambiguate as follows:

• Move the existing page to "<Existing name> (xx)" where xx is the page's language's ISO 639-1 code.
• Call your new page "<Existing name> (xx)" where xx is your target language's ISO 639-1 code.
• Convert "<existing name>" into a disambiguation page. This should explain that the term is used by more than one language and provide links (in alphabetic order) to the correct pages. An example from Wikipedia. In our case, since we are working with multiple languages (which is not an issue for Wikipedia), the explanation should come in every language that the title may refer to, and also in English.

Note: The point of all this is that no language has preference to others just because it was created first.

[edit] Place of the day

Each day's entry has to be translated in advance of its activation. However, the entries are usually set up well in advance so you may get away with translating a week at a time. The process is as follows, using Spanish as the example target language:

• Go to Main Page
• Click on the blue "Place of the day" link at the top of the Place of the day box.
• Navigate to today's date in the long list of days.
• Notice the redlink labelled "Español: Template:Potd/2008-10-26 (es)" but don't click it yet.
• Instead, click on "English" 4 lines above it.
• Click the edit tab.
• Place the cursor in the edit box then Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C.
• Use your browsers back button to return to the page with "Español: Template:Potd/2008-10-26 (es)".
• Click the "Español: Template:Potd/2008-10-26 (es)" link.
• You should now be in an edit window (if not, select the edit tab).
• Ctrl-V
• Translate all text strings & replace links to en Wikipedia with es Wikipedia ones where available.
• Preview (don't forget to provide an edit summary)
• Save.

Job done.