Factorio Forums

Posted: **Thu Jun 04, 2020 1:04 pm**

Hi,

From what I see here here, we don't use the Translate Extension.

With all the translation that already happened, is it too late to ask why we don't use this Extension?

One great advantage is that it helps to see when a page is outaded.

(Sorry if the question is stupid, but I'm still waiting for the my wiki user to be approved)

Posted: **Mon Jun 08, 2020 9:44 am**

Hey,
it is nice that you bring up an extension that could improve the translation workflow.

As it is right now, there aren't many advantages that the extension has over our existing template system. The biggest advantage would be that it would easily show us outdated pages/paragraph. Currently, we have a script that can do that (in a less accurate form): https://wiki.factorio.com/User:Bilka/Outdated_pages.

However, there are quite a few major disadvantages to the translate extension, for example all pages that are translatable would have to be marked as such for the extension. This would most likely have to happen manually because we have a lot of special cases in place for translations, like the history section being excluded on translated pages. Furthermore, the extension allows to only partially translate pages, which goes against our wiki rules.

Currently, the disadvantages of converting the wiki over to the extension outweigh the advantages. However, it is possible that I am overlooking advantages and overestimating the disadvantages, so I want to encourage further discussion of the extension. If you can find more advantages or have an idea for how the conversion would be easier, please let me know here.

Posted: **Mon Jun 08, 2020 10:44 am**

Bilka wrote: Mon Jun 08, 2020 9:44 am As it is right now, there aren't many advantages that the extension has over our existing template system. The biggest advantage would be that it would easily show us outdated pages/paragraph. Currently, we have a script that can do that (in a less accurate form): https://wiki.factorio.com/User:Bilka/Outdated_pages.

I didn't know about this page, that would help a lot.

Bilka wrote: Mon Jun 08, 2020 9:44 am However, there are quite a few major disadvantages to the translate extension, for example all pages that are translatable would have to be marked as such for the extension. This would most likely have to happen manually because we have a lot of special cases in place for translations, like the history section being excluded on translated pages. Furthermore, the translation allows to only partially translate pages, which is not allowed on the wiki.

My experience is more in the "using" part of this extension. I tried to implement it on a wiki I'm the admin, and I noticed that are some tags you can use to exclude parts from the translation. But, yes, we would have to kinda manually put those marks everywhere.

Bilka wrote: Mon Jun 08, 2020 9:44 am Currently, the disadvantages of converting the wiki over to the extension outweigh the advantages. However, it is possible that I am overlooking advantages and overestimating the disadvantages, so I want to encourage further discussion of the extension. If you can find more advantages or have an idea for how the conversion would be easier, please let me know here.

It's tricky to find to where the balance goes.

Advantages:

Easier for translators:
- it is possible to translate the same page by 2+ people (as long as they work on different sections)
  - Because of that a page can be partially translated
- Once something like "== History ==" is translated it becomes available as a hit to all translation sections that look similar. Translating those parts is a matter of click and select what's being hint.
- Don't really need to care about page format, so translators can focus on translating.
- No need to translate wiki links (I don't think adding "/LANG" is a huge problem, but still)
- ... there are more little things that make life easier but I don't remember them now

It is possible to have reviewers

List of what is outdated, what's needs to translate, % of translations per language....

Because of the translation tags, it's possible to choose which parts don't need translation

Disadvantages:

Add tags to all pages (huge one)

Throw away basically everything and start from scratch.

I'm not saying that just because the list is bigger is also greater. Just that maybe it's worthwhile test in a local environment and see for yourself.

About converting, I think (probably naively) that it won't be that hard. Add a tag to the beginning/end of every article (which a bot would be great at) and then removing those that don't need translation (I don't know how easy it is to identify those pages).

I hope it helped.

Posted: **Tue Jun 09, 2020 12:54 pm**

it is possible to translate the same page by 2+ people (as long as they work on different sections)
Because of that a page can be partially translated

As I said above, we do not allow partial translations on the wiki. Partial translations lead to outdated English content persisting on "translated" pages. A great example of that is https://wiki.factorio.com/Map_generator/pt-br, it has some small sections translated and the rest is 3 year old English content. A user wanting to find info on the map generator is better off having no pt-br page at all, meaning it links to the updated English version, than having the outdated page as it exists there. For that reason, the rule against WIP pages in the main namespace exists.
So this is a disadvantage, not an advantage.

No need to translate wiki links (I don't think adding "/LANG" is a huge problem, but still)

We have templates that allow to easily translate links. See https://wiki.factorio.com/Factorio:Translation_guide.

List of what is outdated, what's needs to translate, % of translations per language....

This already exists, see https://wiki.factorio.com/Factorio:Wanted_pages, https://wiki.factorio.com/Factorio:Top_pages and https://wiki.factorio.com/User:Bilka/Outdated_pages.

About converting, I think (probably naively) that it won't be that hard. Add a tag to the beginning/end of every article (which a bot would be great at) and then removing those that don't need translation (I don't know how easy it is to identify those pages).

The pages that need translation are mostly easily identified, they are in https://wiki.factorio.com/Category:English_page.
However, the actual marking is far from being as easy as you think. Take a simple item page like https://wiki.factorio.com/Construction_robot. The following sections would have to excluded from translation:

Infobox, language template at the top: The translations must use the English source.
Achievements: Translatable header, but rest of the translations must use the English source.
History: Not included in translations at all. It is unclear to me whether the extension supports this.
Category, navbox at the bottom: The translations must use the English source

These are so many special cases that I am not certain that it is automatable. And that is just a simple item page.

Furthermore, from what I can find on https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Ext ... ranslation, migrating the already translated pages to the extension's system is not automatable by scripts.

Code: Select all

Don't really need to care about page format, so translators can focus on translating.

Translators may not have to care, but people who change the English pages do. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Ext ... nistration has tons of rules for how to change the text source, even recommending to avoid changes in general! As the game is currently not even 1.0 and keeps changing, it is unreasonable to try to avoid changes. Furthermore, it is a bad idea to expect users to follow such an extensive set of rules when even our current rules and guidelines tend to be too much.
Additionally, if I read the documentation correctly, every single change to English pages would have to be marked as "to translate" by an admin. And from what I can find, there is no good reporting for whether source pages changed without being marked. That means that there would always have to be an admin going over the changes of source pages and marking them "to translate". A single forgotten page and you might not notice it until months later due to the missing reporting.

Posted: **Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:27 pm**

I see.

You seem to have a good thing in place already. So let's keep using it.

Btw, I'll put https://wiki.factorio.com/Map_generator/pt-br high on my list.

cheers

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