Help:Translate

For translation of templates, see Help:Templates#Translating templates.

Since September 2009, the FlightGear Wiki supports multiple languages. From now on every article can be translated into any language, increasing the user friendliness for non-native English speaking users.

We need YOU!

As we have 3,462 articles (some are smaller than others,) it is a heck lot of work to translate all the pages. A couple of users already started translating, but we definitely could use some help, and to be precise: your help! (Almost) everyone here speaks more than one language, so I wouldn't be surprised if most of the FG users are non-native English speakers.

If we all just translate one or two pages every now and then, it would not take *that* long to have at least the most important articles (like Flying the helicopter, FlightGear, Installing Scenery and New to FlightGear) translated.

Look at translation requests for the most urgent translations.

Examples

For examples of articles already translated (into a couple of languages,) take a look at the Main Page.

How do I start translating?

First you need to find an article that you'd like to translate. Then, in the URL bar of your browser, add the abbreviation of your desired language (see here for a list) followed by a slash (/) in front of the English article title and go to that page. Thus, if I wanted to translate the TerraSync article into Dutch, I would visit the nl/TerraSync page. As you can see this article has recently been translated into Dutch.

As an example we will translate the actual article. You can leave wiki links as they are (pointing to the English article,) unless the article is translated into the language of your article. In that case you make a wiki link like this: [[:nl:Hoofdpagina]]. nl:Hoofdpagina will be shown in the article. It is prefered however to use [[:nl:Hoofdpagina|Hoofdpagina]], as that will get rid of the language prefix (Hoofdpagina).

At the far bottom of the article you need to place the language links, so there will be a nice selection list in the menu. All translations of the article should be listed. So on the English article of TerraSync, we add: [[nl:TerraSync]]. On the Dutch article, we add [[en:TerraSync]]. The language that the article is written in can be left out. Please keep the languages in alphabetical order, so it will be easier to add/remove languages.

Once you have translated an article, you need to add a language link to it on every translation of the article. Visit the English article to see in which languages it has been translated.

Step by step guide

1. Find the English version of the page you would like to translate.
2. Check if you agree with the content of the English page, use the discussion page or edit the English page so that it is up-to date (There is no reason why a translated page should not be better as the English version but for synchronisation it's preferred that the English version is up-to-date first) .
3. Look left below, if the page has been translated to other languages it will list those languages below In other languages.
4. If your language is not listed you can claim it and start translating. (If your language *is* listed, check it and update it)
5. Find out the Language Extension LE of your language from this list.
6. Edit the English version on the page.
7. Add to the bottom of the page [[LE:Page title]] where LE is the language extension and Page title is the correct title in your language.
8. Save the English page and check if it now lists your language.
9. Click the language link to edit the page in your language.
10. Add {{BeingTranslated}}~~~~ at the top of the page.
11. Enter [[en:Page title]] at the bottom of your page, where Page title is the title of the original English page.
12. If the English page has already been translated to other languages copy and paste those languages from the English page to the bottom of your page.
13. Save your page and check if the language links work.
14. You can claim your translation here: Translation requests
15. Start translating and place your work into the new page.
16. Place the link to your translation ([[LE:Page Title]]) at the bottom of the pages of other translations.
17. Follow/Watch the English page and update your page when you see interesting updates.

What articles should not be translated?

Do not start translating articles that are considered for deletion or need merging. First, the English variants of those articles should be improved.

Thanks a lot for your translations or any other contributions you make to the wiki! Your hard work is really appreciated by all FG users!