User:Zai Lynch/Sandbox/Project:Languages Proposal
Project:Languages became revised lately. Please become familiar with the new suggestions and discuss them at the related discussion page.
Language Guidelines for SL wiki
This page discusses the guidelines on natural language uses and content translation of SL wiki (http://wiki.secondlife.com). Translation of SL Viewer UI is discussed on a separate page: How to Localize Your World. Information on a resident-run activity called i18n Project is available on Project:i18n.
At this moment, the contents on this page are just a set of proposals. Please feel free to have discussions on the associated discussion page or simply modify this page. It is expected, however, that in a future entire contents of SL wiki follow the revised guidelines on this page. If you are changing existing practices, someone needs to rewrite existing pages to follow the new rule.
So, if you have something to say on this issue, please start soon!
Creating pages
Primary Language
English is the primary language of SL wiki.
English is chosen because it is the most common language in international communication today. It is not to give privilege to native English speakers. So, even if you are very good at English, please assume that readers are not fluent in English and use plain simple wording.
You may use foreign words or phrases in English sentences if it is needed. However, please avoid gentility uses of Latin, Greek or French.
Page titles
The title of a page in the SL Wiki should be in the same language as the article itself.
In case article names about the same subject collide (e.g. almost all LSL Portal related articles like llSay), the base page should be in English.
Non English contents
If you want to create a new page in a non-English language, please consider to write it in two languages; one is English and another in your non-English language, connecting both via Template:Multi-lang. See paragraphs below for more detailed info about the procedure. The English page doesn't need to be complete in this case. Just a brief summary is OK.
Even if you are not willing or lack enough skills to write the page in English, it is recommended to create an almost empty English page that only says something like "The content of this page is not available in English for the moment", and write your non-English page as a translation.
This way, other residents can eventually translate your contents into English without changing entire page structures.
Translation
Linguists are invited to translate SL Wiki pages into other languages.
Page titles
Translated content is written in its own page.
The title of the translated page should be a translation of its corresponding English page title. The non-English article should contain
{{multi-lang|1=ENGLISH_ARTICLENAME|2=LANGUAGE_CODE}}
on top of the page.
The English page should have a subpage located at ENGLISH_ARTICLENAME/LANGUAGE_CODE with
#REDIRECT [[NON_ENGLISH_ARTICLENAME]]
as its only content.
Following this suggestion might lead into article name collisions. There are two possible kinds of article name collissions which are handled seperatly.
Collision: Identical Titel - Same Topic
In case two articles of the same topic collide, the English article will be placed at base page and the non-English article will be placed at a subpage with an appropriate language code. For example:
etc.
Collission: Identical Article - Different Topic
Consider the following cenario:
- An article about the sim "Luna" would be located at /wiki/Luna.
- An article about the natural satellite, the "Moon" would be located at /wiki/Moon
Should these articles be translated into french, there is a collision with "Moon" being "Luna".
The current proposal is that a french translation of Luna be located at Luna/fr, and a french translation of Moon be located at /wiki/Luna_(satellite_naturel)[1].
The page Luna should contain a disambiguation on top, containing "____LALALA_____".[2].
Languages Template
Translated pages should be tagged with the {{Multi-lang}} template. English pages that have one or more translation should also. The {{Multi-lang}} template should be put near the top of the page and kept at the same location in translations of the same page.
Consistent use of {{Multi-lang}} template helps readers to find their preferred language versions of pages.
Note that the Template:Multi-lang is also available as another name Template:Languages for a historical reason.
Links
If the target page has no translation to the same language, link to the primary (English) page.
Synchronization
Try to synchronize the content of the translated page with the corresponding English page, though you, as a translator, have no duty to track the changes to the original page. Any Resident who notices the change is encouraged to update the translation.
Adding new info only on the translated page is hence dangerous, because some other Resident may remove the addition to synchronize the content. You need some clear indication if you add some.
Language Codes
SL wiki uses both ISO 639-1 (alpha-2) codes and ISO 639-3 codes for language identification.
When both are applecable, 639-1 alpha-2 code has a precedence.
(See discussion page for this point.)
List of language codes
As of this writing, the following language codes are used in SL wiki. The list will expand time-to-time.
| Code | Language |
|---|---|
| de | German |
| el | Greek |
| en | English |
| es | Spanish |
| fr | French |
| it | Italian |
| ko | Korean |
| ja | Japanese |
| nl | Dutch |
| pl | Polish |
| pt | Portuguese |
| sv | Swedish |
| zh-Hans | Chinese (Simplified) |
| zh-Hant | Chinese (Traditional) |
Note that an English page title has no language code attached, so there should not be a page of the title "Something/en". However, the code en for English appears on various locations.
Footnotes
- ^ which means: Moon (natural satellite)
- ^ Translation: "In case you were looking for the natural satellite, please browse to Luna (satellite naturel)"