User:Zai Lynch/Sandbox/Project:Languages Proposal

Template:Needs Translation/de Template:Needs Translation/es Template:Needs Translation/el Template:Needs Translation/fr Template:Needs Translation/he Template:Needs Translation/it Template:Needs Translation/ja Template:Needs Translation/ko Template:Needs Translation/nl Template:Needs Translation/hu Template:Needs Translation/no Template:Needs Translation/da Template:Needs Translation/sv Template:Needs Translation/tr Template:Needs Translation/pl Template:Needs Translation/pt Template:Needs Translation/ru Template:Needs Translation/th Template:Needs Translation/uk Template:Needs Translation/zh-Hans Template:Needs Translation/zh-Hant

Note: Project:Languages was recently revised. 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. Currently, 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 eventually the entire contents of the SL Wiki will follow the revised guidelines on this page. If you are changing existing practices, someone will need to rewrite existing pages to follow your 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 take care to avoid uses of Latin, Greek, or French in translations.

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 writing it in two languages; one in English and another in your non-English language, connecting both via Template:Multi-lang. See the paragraphs below for a more detailed view of the procedure. The English page doesn't need to be complete in this case. Just a brief summary should be fine.

Even if you are not willing or lack proper 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 currently.", and write your non-English page as a translation.

This way, other residents can eventually translate your contents into English without changing entire page structure.

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 collisions which are handled seperately.

Collision: Identical Title - 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:

• English page: llSay
• French page: llSay/fr
• Japanese page: llSay/ja

etc.

Collision: Identical Title - Different Topic

Consider the following scenario:

• 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 the {{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 something only to the translation and not the primary article.

Language Codes

SL Wiki uses both ISO 639-1 (alpha-2) codes and ISO 639-3 codes for language identification.

When both are applicable, 639-1 alpha-2 code has 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 is expected to expand over 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 will not have a language code attached, so there should not be a page of the title "Something/en". However, the code en for English can and will appear at various locations.

Footnotes

1. ^ which means: Moon (natural satellite)
2. ^ Translation: "In case you were looking for the natural satellite, please browse to Luna (satellite naturel)"