User:Maffblaster/Drafts/HALP
Halp! I need somebody... Haalp! Not just anybody... Haaalp! You know I need someone... Haaaalp!
After being approved to help translate, many of our wiki translators cannot figure how to use features MediaWiki software, especially the translation plugin, in order to start working on translating. This is primarily caused by a lack of understanding of how basic MediaWiki functionality has been implemented within the Handbook(s). This short article will explain some of the basic features of MediaWiki, and how they impact our wiki translation software.
Core concepts
MediaWiki
Transclusions
To decrease redundancy and aid in effective editing, the Handbooks are broken into two sections:
- Handbook:Parts
- Handbook:Parts is used as the reusable base text for the Handbook. It should be thought of a parent sections that can be transcluded into the Handbook:ARCH child sections, such as Handbook:AMD64, Handbook:x86, Handbook:PPC, etc. Because these sections are transcluded they will not be displayed in the percentage translated of the child ARCH handbooks.
- Handbook:ARCH
- Handbook:ARCH are child sections that include transcluded sections of Handbook:Parts.
Translation plugin
The translation plugin works by adding translation blocks (which are HTML comments) page at a time. These translation blocks simply add numerical identifiers to each block of next in order to track how much of a page has been translated.
Language statistics
The Special:LanguageStats page can be used to determine how much translation work is left todo for a specific language.
For example, if a Korean translator wanted to see how much work translation work is left for Korean they would look at this link.
Examples
For example, view the following:
Example text here.