Instructions For Wikidot Translators

How to become a translator

You need to be a member of this site. Click Join button to apply.

Once you are a member of this site, you can work on already existing translation, or create a new one. If your language is not available under "Available translations" menu, click "Translations Home" (or go to http://translate.wikidot.com/) enter the two-letter code of your language in the text box and click "Translate". Then supply the language name (in English) and click Save.

If your translation is available (or you've just created it), you can locate it by clicking the name of your language in the "Available translations" menu on the left of this site.

Messages are split into parts based on the first letter of the message. Click letters A — Z to translate messages starting from that letter. The message "The page you want to access does not exist." may appear if no messages for that letter have been yet translated. Click "create page" to proceed.

Getting up to date with comments

If translation for your language was already created when you joined the site, you should go to your language page (Available translations » your language) and click "watch page" in the left-side menu to be notified about comments for the translations.

From Available translations » your language follow the Translation discussion link. If that page doesn't exist, just create it and save. If it exists already, click "watch page" in the left-side menu to be notified about new posts of translators. By the way, on that page, you can discuss translators conventions in your language (for example if you have two possible translations of "page", but want to keep it consistent among the whole translation).

You'll automatically get notifications about comments made on the pages you edited, for example for translations you made.

To verify you'll get notifications about comments on given page, see if you're listed as Watcher in left-side menu.

Basic rules for translations

1. If original text contains HTML tags, you need to use the same tags in the translations, for example:

<a href="http://www.wikidot.com">Wikidot.com</a> registered users

should be translated to:

<a href="http://www.wikidot.com">Wikidot.com</a> Regisrierte Nutzer

You can change the URL of the links if there is more appropriate content in your language (but it must be hosted on wikidot.com). You can also change the place the tag appears if that makes more sense in your language, for example, this is a valid translation too:

Zarejestrowani użytkownicy <a href="http://www.wikidot.com">Wikidot.com</a>

2. Don't use HTML tags attributes in translations, for example this would be WRONG translation:

<a href="http://www.wikidot.com" style="text-size: large">Wikidot.com</a> Regisrierte Nutzer

Notice the added "style" attribute. This is not allowed.

HTML tags attributes are only allowed for <a> tags — the attributes allowed are whose appear in the original text — in the order they appear in it.

3. If original text doesn't contain HTML tags, DO NOT use HTML tags in translations.

4. If original text contains magic tokens like %1, %2, %s, %d, %%SITE_NAME%% or similar your translation should also have them. When displaying the message to user the tokens will be replaced with site name, user name, number of new messages or similar variable (it should be clear in the context).

Note %%SITE_NAME%% should not be translated!

Example:

Another Wikidot.com site already redirects the "%s" domain.

translates to:

Eine andere Wikidot.Com Site redirekt schon die "%s" domain.

As clearly seen in this context %s would be replaced with some domain name.

5. Don't HTML-escape special chars. Most importantly, use & instead of &amp; and >> instead of &gt;&gt; (even if original text have them escaped). As translated strings are safely-escaped, escaping them by you would make them shown double-escaped.

6. Use modern browser for translating, like Firefox, Safari or Chrome. Translating in Internet Explorer (7, 8) works, but the UI is less optimal in it.