Wikipedia talk:Translation

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Handling templates from the source language article

Is there anything to be said about dealing with the templates in articles one plans to translate from another language's Wikipedia (for example, whether Wikimedia has tools for that, or recommendations for going about it) and, if there is, is this page a good place to say it? Largoplazo (talk) 01:49, 4 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Largoplazo:, this type of issue has long been on my back burner. I also don't know where the right venue is (possibly WP:Request template, if that's is a solution]]), but since we're both here, we might as well start here.

First of all, can you clarify if you are talking about templates in foreign wikis that have equivalents here, perhaps under a different template name? Or, do you mean templates in other languages that don't exist here? The latter case is one of my pet peeves when doing translation, and I just took one baby step to resolve that for French translators.

French articles, especially about historical topics, often use the fr:S- template to indicate centuries, which are usually expressed in Roman numerals in French (but rarely in English). We'll probably never catch up with the insane number of century templates in French, but I struck a blow for fr→en translators by creating template {{Nth century}} just now, and adding a redirect to it from {{S-}}, which is the same name as the French template, and also defined it as "subst only". This means that anyone translating a French article littered with French "S-" templates (like fr:Liste des chronologies thématiques or fr:6 septembre), no longer has to deal with it: they can just port it over and forget about the templates, instead of having to find and replace them all.^[a] Where before, every occurrence would've give you a red-linked S- all over your English article, now it just properly indicates the text that ought to be there: eg., {{S-|XVIII}} → 18th century, and because of the "subst" setting, AnomieBOT will come around within a few hours and subst it, leaving "18th century" in the text, and no trace that there was ever a template there.

If this is something that has bothered you as well when doing translations, then it probably bothers lots of others. I think this could be the germ of an idea that would benefit translators from multiple languages, and we should think how to manage it, and where. I'm thinking of a subproject, or Task force, where we'd maintain lists of the "pet peeve templates" by language, and then figure out which ones could be dealt with in some way. Perhaps a subset could be dealt with in the way I just did for French {{S-}}, by defining them here, then making them disappear as subst-only. We should probably start by figuring out what the greatest offenders are, and if there's any pattern across languages, or if it's pretty individual.

Let's start hyper-local: what are your biggest "pet peeve" templates when translating? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 04:42, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

{{,}} hands down Elinruby (talk) 05:49, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, unfortunately, the French stick that between contiguous references. Unfortunately, we can't usurp the existing {{,}} template in en-wiki, which has another use (it leaves a middot character), so we're limited to just removing the ones from the French articles we copy from. But if that's your worst pet peeve, you're in luck because it's pretty easy to eliminate them with a global replace in most offline editors. Mathglot (talk) 08:28, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Notes

^ This is not 100% true at this point, because the French template can handle ranges like XVI-XVIII whereas our template doesn't yet; but expansion is planned.

Avoid machine translation

There is a discussion here about updating the Avoid machine translation section of Help:Translation. Participants in this project may be interested as Help:Translation was spun out of this page. TSventon (talk) 12:59, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Merge proposal

I am proposing merging Help:Translation into this page because it appears to have the same scope, and could therefore benefit from consolidation to focus/centralize our editorial energy. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:00, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For background, Help:Translation was split out in 2021 by PBS as explained at Wikipedia talk:Translation/Archive 4#Move to the Help workspace. TSventon (talk) 16:33, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sdkb I agree that makes sense as the help page is mostly policy which was originally this page. TSventon (talk) 14:46, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Another page, even if slightly redundant, makes absolute sense in Help workspace. It is simply there to help newcomers find their way around. Lectonar (talk) 10:33, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The other page would be redirected here if merged. Redundant project pages are bad — they increase the maintenance burden (neither of these two is very good) and confuse newcomers who get overwhelmed by the number of possible places to read help. Sdkb ^talk 13:37, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am a newbie at translation tools on WP, you - Sdkb - are probably not. I am good enough in several languages to translate well (e.g no native speaker of English, but can discuss even some linguistics in it; did several translations "manually"at WP), but not used to this environment and not yet successful with it's translation tools.

I tried to use them, and didn't succeed yet to finish, and publish, the translation with translation tool yet. I think draft of my translation got discarded in the end, because it wasn't published too long when I was trying to make tool work to the end. I am rereading the instructions before trying again now, and intend to document how I didn't succeed if it should happen again. I also need to reread help files in target language (next intended translation is from English article, and the next from German).

From my point of view, current contents of wikipedia:translate and help:translate articles are not only significantly different, they address different topics. You (Sdkb) address economy, and ease of keeping contents of both articles consistent with your proposal, I am showing you the problem of usefulness of them to a newbie - and I think this priority is higher.

Different topics addressed:

Wikipedia:translate is addressing mostly what you can do when you need (e.g. how request or propose a translation), or want to help with, a translation, and what to do if an existing translation is not yet adequate (e.g. .how to mark it by appropriate template).
Help:translate addresses how to do the translation (e.g. what policies to keep in mind to adhere to, and how to find, enable, and use the translation tool etc.). That is the piece I think I'll need most at the moment.

Again, from my point of view, if the articles get merged, those two primarily different scopes should be easily found (by a newbie, not only it's editor).

If they are not merged, the preamble (of both current articles) should clearly show this difference (and I'd currently prefer that; might change my mind after next - hopefully successful - try at translation with WP translation tools). Also, in how to translate (current help:translate) should probably be addressed what is in common and what is the difference between sandbox and draft space (I'd feel much more comfortable to experiment with translation tool in sandbox first; the concept of draft space is not even mentioned in (either) current (en) translate article (if draft space exists, the fact is a no-brainer for an old hand, and pure guesswork for a newbie). Marjan Tomki SI (talk) 03:59, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Marjan Tomki SI, I agree with you that they have a different scope, but I don't really see any harm in putting them together. We can then work on making the page more easily understandable for editors new to translation. Have you had another try at using the translation tools since you made this comment? How did it go? Can you share what points you feel are most confusing? -- asilvering (talk) 00:17, 30 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

poignant personal anecdote, entirely off-topic here

Hadn't had time yet to get to Wikipedia (and mostly to comp at all) till last week or so. In July I did water rescue (and relevant first aid and CPR) training (and passed examinations). That was pretty involved for previous month (almost all comp. time was on that subject too), because parts of my knowledge were pretty outdated.

Last year I lost a friend and sailing colleague to drowning at sailing and wanted to know if anything else could be done for him to survive, and when I was offered this courses I accepted and did my best to learn as much as possible, and also pass that experience (why he got breathing blocked, and lost consciousness at all; we seem to have done everything possible, and seemingly more after, but was not enough) to teaching staff and methodologists to hopefully improve general courses of swimming so that what happened to him would be less probable in similar situations.

I'm currently mostly working on repairing some damage on club sailboats which I also neglected for last month or so, so I am mostly still of comp, and I'll let you know here when I can return to WP, and translations, again.

Regarding the subject of no harm in putting both sides together: I think that's disputable.

It reminds me of putting computer and operating system's general description (which should describe necessary functions and facilities offered, so reader gets the idea what is to be, or can be, or should not be... done with that) and detailed reference manual (which would focus on when, and how to do (or not do) any of those things in detail. And I haven't even mention the part - User Guide - that goes between those two.

My experience (both as a novice and as a teacher, where in both functions I strove for no failures, and absorption of complete knowledge wherever wanted and possible) from several areas (from informatics through general problems solving to sports) is that those different levels are best kept separate (and targeted to type of audience).

For a novice at anything, I try to detect the plateau (when her or his info buffer in the brain is full), and send him or her to do something else for a while (including have a meal, and/or to sleep the problem over). After sleeping over the subject matter is usually consolidated, things not understood get clear etc.

If I were persisting after plateau was reached, time and effort would be wasted. Even more seriously, if a novice is overwhelmed with details, (s)he usually looses patience, and interest in the subject, or even develops aversion to the subject, which is IMO (almost always) something of the worst a teacher can do to a pupil.

But if the subject is structured in an interesting way for a beginner, then the detail an experienced but casual user might need to get quickly reminded about, might take unnecessary time and effort to find.

So, targeted themes are often useful, and sometimes necessary, even when there is redundancy. Marjan Tomki SI (talk) 05:15, 1 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Collapsing well-meant personal anecdote, probably meant for some other page somewhere. Mathglot (talk) 19:41, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Sdkb Having thought about this a bit more, I think it would be better if we moved most of what is in the Help version back to this page, and made the Help version more newbie-friendly. That would distinguish the two more clearly and make them both useful, I think. This isn't an idle suggestion; I'm happy to get to work on WP:HOWTRANS with that in mind, and I've started a talk page thread to that effect. -- asilvering (talk) 17:16, 1 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Asilvering, I see the thread Help talk:Translation#Improving guidance for newbies that you started, which did not attract any replies, nor any activity at Help:Translation. Now what? Maybe start over, or maybe reboot the original request; pinging @Asilvering, Sdkb, TSventon, PBS, and Marjan Tomki SI: Mathglot (talk) 01:48, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Add missing ping: Lectonar. Did I miss anyone else? Mathglot (talk) 01:50, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I was definitely relying on someone replying about it to remind me that I'd said I was going to do that. I still think it's a good idea to have two separate pages, one that's more "here are the policies" and one that's a more newbie-friendly guide. I don't think I'll have the time to get to it this month since it's peak academic chaos time. -- asilvering (talk) 02:51, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for ping; as I wrote above, I come to comp (and internet) rarely, so it was luck I saw this already.

On my to-do list there are several articles to be translated from German to Slovenian, but as it can be seen it was several months since I tried - unsuccessfully (and should try to find if I left myself notes what I tried and what the problems were). I have also set a number of {{ill}} links in sl articles, which also call for translations (from English, German, Italian...).

As I wrote, before retirement I was living from informatics (including creating and updating manuals for tools and procedures, and training people to do things), and had several levels of documentation for that. E.g.:

General description: what something - a system, component... - does (or at least is intended to do: functions and facilities...), what components it has and how are they related - essential for acquiring (or not) optional components
Reference manual (all commands with all options etc. - what you can do and how you request it - when you know what you want to do and are just missing details).
User's guide (recommended ways how you can go about tasks, and why)
Technical manual (limitations of the systems and components etc., error messages and recovery and maintenance procedures)

The list is not exhaustive. It was information about same thing, but for different uses (or users). Even same users at different times needed different access when just trying to recall a parameter value, or when trying to recall the reason why not to do a particular procedure in particular situation. So called "step by step" books were possibly useful for total newbies without a teacher that can answer questions, but pretty useless as reference or user guide materials. On the other side, reference manuals and user guides should anyway be understandable to newbies as well, but that is not an easy task (and usually called for authors remembering being newbies, and also testing with newbies).

Managing such is not trivial and might be above capabilities of volunteers, but example above could clarify why putting everything in one article might not always be optimal.

Up to now: I don't recall to having succeeded to make (and save) a single translation yet, but I didn't yet find time to go thoroughly about that). Several months have passed between tries, so I don't recall details, but following hints and help (that I found up to hen) didn't help me succeed yet.; Hopefully, if tomorrow I succeed to leave four club sailboats I was working on this week operational, I'll try one of translations from to-do list again and report what happened (I hope I made, and expect I'll find, documentation on past tries, and add about new tries (hopefully with more success). If I don't succeed (creating and saving a translation) again, let me know where to discuss what I understand wrong; if I succeed, documented differences between past unsuccessful and successful tries should help improve info for newbies. And of course, when I'll be at it, any help would be welcome.

But if there would be problems (with or around those sailboats), I'm not sure when I'll be able to continue here. Marjan Tomki SI (talk) 00:29, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

~~Support~~ On the fence – I don't see any way to easily distinguish WP:Translation from Help:Translation for a user looking for one of them other than a name change to both, and even then, the difference seems artificial. The hatnotes help, but are a stopgap and simply illustrate further that users are likely to show up at the wrong place. Conceivably I would change my !vote if we renamed them to:

Then again, that reality check points out the futility of renaming, and would just make things worse. Just merging the two and calling it by either of the two one-word titles, with the section names of the merged article clearly getting the user to the information they want regardless whether they came there for the what or the how is easy and fairly simple to carry out. The original proposal is the best solution; I urge users to support it and carry it out. Mathglot (talk) 01:50, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am on Asilverings side here...I see a net plus in having 2 pages: one for "policy", and one a bit teahouse-like. Is the need to merge so dire as to make it absolutely necessary to pour much sweat into this? Fwiw, only experienced users will notice that we have some redundancies in the pages. Lectonar (talk) 07:38, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've changed how I think about this in terms of a bolded vote, and to an extent what outcome I would like the see happen. The recent closure and reopening made me realize that some of the opinions expressed in this discussion have some subtleties that aren't well captured by a single, bolded !vote, being binary by nature (if support/oppose are the sole options). That includes my own vote, which I have changed to 'on the fence'. In theory, I can still see some advantage from merging them, but practically speaking less so than before based on comments by Lectonar, TSventon, and Largoplazo. What tipped me over into changing my vote was that I don't have a lot of confidence that a merge could be carried out well and in a way that would actually improve things from the way they are now (which is not great in either page) whereas I can envision a plan that would make the Help page much more useful than it is now, and if that happened, the situation with the WP project page might become clearer in comparison and a path to improving it might crystallize. So I guess the 'on the fence' could be read as, 'One page would be great if we could do it well, but I just don't see a way that is going to happen, and an attempt might make things worse, but I do see a way that the overall situation can be improved by concentrating on the Help page first, and then seeing what happens down the road'. This discussion is far older than a typical merge discussion (due to having been forgotten for a year) but if there is still interest and activity I'm hoping that it will remain open and attract additional comment and new contributors. If it is closed soon I would ask the closer to dive deep. Mathglot (talk) 20:42, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I too would just prefer that we made one better. Some time ago I started in on this and never got back to it. Since we're not really focusing editorial interest on either page I'm not sure there's much merit in combining them (I think that effort would be better placed fixing up one or the other), but since I'm not doing any of that work myself I have no intention of getting in the way of someone who wants to redirect one page to the other. I think the lack of comment on this despite having an open merge discussion for so long is all the silence we need for anyone to be able to conclude: no one's working here, so be WP:BOLD. I'd oppose any bold page moves, since that tends to create a lot of work, but if someone wants to roll up an improved draft version of any of these pages, more power to them. -- asilvering (talk) 20:52, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Leaving aside the question of whether the distinction between the pages could be more sharply delineated, is there any less reason to maintain them as two separate pages than there is with any other Help: page and its corresponding Wikipedia: page? Example: Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines and Help:Talk pages. Largoplazo (talk) 17:09, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In principle I like the idea of a help page that is user friendly, like Help:Talk pages, but I don't think that the current "help " page achieves that. Hence I support a merge at present, but would also support a better help page for translation. TSventon (talk) 18:47, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In general, I disagree with Largoplazo partly because WP:TALK is a guideline and WP:Translation is not and so the situations are not analogous, but that only scratches the surface and hopefully I'll get back to that with more detail. But for now, I just wanted to chime in to agree with TSventon. I also am a big believer in helpful pages that are friendly and welcoming, especially to someone doing something for the first time (kind of like H:YFA is intended to be) and we don't really have that currently for translation. So, yes to merge at present (let's recall that it always was just one page, until split a few years ago), perhaps to be followed by creation of a better help page that would be better targeted at first-timers, if someone wants to take that on. In that case, I think we would have to define scope carefully, so as not to duplicate the current muddled situation, but I think that could be done. Mathglot (talk) 19:44, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I made some improvements at Help:Translation mostly to see what we have there and improve it organizationally, and wrote up my conclusions at Help talk:Translation#Reorg without rewrite. Mathglot (talk) 00:06, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support - I do not see the need to have a help page separate from a Wikipedia project page about the same topic. Z. Patterson (talk) 00:15, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support per Lectonar Riad Salih (talk) 14:37, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Disputed. Will contact the closer. Mathglot (talk) 06:32, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Reopened. FaviFake (talk) 09:32, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Bibliographical references

Are there any guidelines for bibliographical references in translated articles? In particular, should English translations of titles be provided along with the original, and if so, is there a preferred format for this?

See Collett family#Literature—most of the titles are very long, and doing something like

Author, Veldig lang opprinnelig tittel på norsk eller dansk ("very long translated title in English"), publisher, place, year, p. 17. Includes photo of the thing we're discussing.

could get pretty cumbersome, but I think readers who don't read Norwegian would benefit from knowing what they mean. Musiconeologist (talk) 22:57, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Musiconeologist, It is helpful for English-speaking editors to have an English translation of the title, and most of the Citation-family of templates have the parameter |trans-title= available for this. (For example, see {{Citation#Title}}.) I always use the |trans-title= parameter in my citations to foreign sources, and I encourage you to do so as well. If using plain-text citations, just provide the translation in English within square brackets – i.e., "Title in quotes in Norwegian"; [English title here] – so it matches the style of the citation templates as much as possible. Mathglot (talk) 03:16, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks—that's very helpful, and I didn't know of |trans-title=. That's obviously the thing to use.

Another issue I've got is that because of the history of the language, for some titles I can't say whether they're in Norwegian or Danish because they date from a time when written Norwegian was very similar to Danish. (For about 450 years the official written language was Danish. What's now Bokmål started life as Norwegianised Danish, meaning anything before about 1920 looks Danish to me even if it's Norwegian.) Musiconeologist (talk) 03:34, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I am aware of the da-no language issues. If you are not certain, you could just leave it out, but there are two other possibilities: comments are allowed in citations (including templates) so you could do use  within your reference to explain the da-no issue. The other possibility, is to use a {{Clarify}} template with the |reason= parameter to say the same thing, which I prefer because Html comments are visible to editors but not readers, whereas a {{clarify}} template is visible to both. There may be other solutions, but those are two I am aware of. Mathglot (talk) 04:47, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Mathglot I notice that the original author is still active on Wikipedia (and starts both English and Norwegian Wikipedia articles), so I might be able to get definitive answers from him about the language(s). I think he added the section to both articles, then accidentally left it in Norwegian. Though that said, being Norwegian doesn't necessarily give someone the ability to distinguish between old-fashioned Norwegian and old-fashioned Danish. Musiconeologist (talk) 20:05, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(Add ping of Musiconeologist.) Mathglot (talk) 07:58, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

differences between the templates 'cleanup translation' and 'rough translation'

MOVED

See discussion at Template talk:Rough translation#differences between the templates 'cleanup translation' and 'rough translation'.

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Does anyone know the differences between the templates {{cleanup translation}} and {{rough translation}} because I can't seem to find many and I think they're only worded differently and not very clearly, and if so, can someone please explain them? PK2 (talk; contributions) 05:54, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

PK2, I suggest you close this discussion ({{Atop|status=moved|result=See discussion at [[discussion]].}}... {{Abot}}) and reraise it at one of the two template talk pages, with a Talk page link from the other one to the discussion. It might end up provoking a merge request, but let's see what people have to say about it. Mathglot (talk) 06:28, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks so much. I'll do that right now. PK2 (talk; contributions) 07:07, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Discussion at Template talk:Rough translation § differences between the templates 'cleanup translation' and 'rough translation'

You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:Rough translation § differences between the templates 'cleanup translation' and 'rough translation'. PK2 (talk; contributions) 07:55, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

[1] This is not 100% true at this point, because the French template can handle ranges like XVI-XVIII whereas our template doesn't yet; but expansion is planned.

[a]