Help:Contents/Translation Rules

This is a sub-page of Help:Contents.

We welcome any help with translating things on TCRF. However, please be sure to follow the rules we have regarding minimum levels of fluency.

Note that there are two separate things people can translate on the wiki: small pieces of unused text, images, etc. that are a piece of a larger article; and translating the entire article itself. While the rules we have for doing both are largely the same, adding a translation to an article requires no special preparation. However, when translating an entire page via the available translation plugin, some preparation of the article is needed before work can begin.

General Guidelines

Fluency

Please only translate into languages you speak natively, or have a native degree of fluency in. Don't use Google Translate or other automated translators. The preceding sentences, after translated through an automated translation service, came out as something like: "One only native speakers in the conversion of native is fluent, has a degree. Google translate or does not use other automated translation." Do not use OCR tools unless you are capable of going through their output and checking it against the original source for accuracy, since they are not accurate enough to produce reliable results on their own.

For translating from other languages, you should have a level of fluency high enough to understand the material in question. Be careful when "fixing" or "improving" existing translations, as they may have been deliberately worded the way they were so as to reflect the original source. When in doubt, ask!

Grammar and Spelling

Use proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation at all times. Do your best to check over your writing before you save the page!

Translating Content for Articles

Transcribing Text

If you are not fluent enough to transcribe text from an image, post said image and mark it with {{needstranslation|lang=ja|Reason}} for Japanese text. Replace "lang=ja" with whatever language code may apply if the source text is in a different language (e.g. "lang=ko" for Korean, "lang=fr" for French, etc.). Replace "Reason" with something descriptive like "Debug options need to be translated" or "Kanji in lower-right corner of image needs to be translated".

Translating Text

Likewise, if you are not fluent enough to translate text, post it to the article in question and mark it with {{needstranslation|lang=ja|Reason}}, following the above rules. Do not replace the original text that was extracted from the game; instead, show both the original text as well as the translation of that text. This also goes for image translations.

Formatting Tables for Translators to Use

Whenever possible, please add the text you wish to be translated to a table, leaving one side of it blank where the translation will be placed. This allows our translators to focus their effort on translating the text in question, rather than spending additional time on formatting the text to fit well on the page.

Two sample tables are provided below, but contributors are encouraged to adapt and expand these to suit the task at hand:

Code:

{|class="wikitable" !Japanese !Translation |- |Japanese text goes here |(Leave this side blank for translators to fill in) |- |Japanese text goes here | |- |Japanese text goes here | |}

Code:

{|class="wikitable" !Japanese |- |Japanese text goes here |- !Translation |- |(Blank for translators to fill in) |}

Translating Entire Pages

We're currently translating some of the main pages of TCRF (including the help page, templates, sidebars, and front page) into multiple languages. Though we are just starting out, some articles are also marked to be translated as well. If you would like to help, please contact an administrator:

• Bast talk contribs
• Hawk talk contribs
• HugetteHikari talk contribs
• Rachel Mae talk contribs
• Raspberry talk contribs
• Revenant talk contribs
• Xkeeper talk contribs

Read these guidelines before you start translating.

Required Reading

Before attempting to use the wiki's translation options, please read through the Translate extension's documentation.

Required reading for translators are, at the bare minimum, the translation tutorial and best practices pages.

Translation administrators also are required to read the page translation example.

Categories

Don't translate the publisher and developer names for consistency across languages. Make sure the system names included in the Bob match up with those in the existing category.

{{subpage}} Translation

When translating the {{subpage}} template, DO NOT translate the title (the text between the first and second | marks). Instead, add a |tr= onto the end (before the }}) with the translated title. For example, {{subpage|Unused text|tr=Texto sin usar}} becomes

Texto sin usar

, but would link to Help:Contents/Translation Rules/Unused text (when used on translated pages).

{{namespaces}} Translation

{{namespaces}} is a template that points to pages within the same game name in the different namespaces that exist on the wiki (like Proto: and Prerelease:). To translate this template properly, you need to actually translate the template itself, off page, and then call the translated template in the page. Once the template has been translated, call it on the page with {{namespaces/[language code]}}, as you would any other translated template. Do note that due to the way {{namespaces}} is supposed to work, if you have not translated the namespace articles, they will still be linked to, but will have text after their links mentioning they are not translated yet.

Placeholder Translations

Any translation made solely to translate the article headers is highly discouraged, as it can be considered the equivalent of a placeholder page. These can be deleted if nothing more than the headers is translated after one week.

Documentation

The documentation area in the translation tool allows you to add notes as to the context of a certain section or text within said section. Note that the documentation you write here is global (it shows up for all languages in the translation tool), so if you mention something about a specific language's translation, it will also be visible when translating to another. Please only write Documentation in English, as other languages may not be understandable to translators of a different language than yours.

User Page Language Template

To help aid communication between users that speak multiple languages, a template can be added to your user page to display your language proficiencies. Detailed usage instructions can be found on the Babel extension page.

We encourage all users who have any degree of second language ability to add the above template to their user page. A simple example is as follows {{#babel: en-N | ja-3 }}

Templates

Instead of translating the title of the template, use {{template/lang}}, where template is the name of the English language template and lang is the language to be used.

Current Translators

The people listed below have listed themselves as being a translator on the wiki. Please feel free to leave a message for them asking for their help, but also be aware that their time may be limited and that they may not be able to respond to all requests in a timely manner. They are volunteers, just like everyone else at the wiki.

1468z - Italian
Algaja - Chinese
Bast - Japanese
BreakingBenny - Swedish
Centaurio - Polish
Citrininis3412 - Lithuanian
Comboy - Japanese
Edness - Latvian
Enrospv - Spanish
Espyo - European Portuguese
Gamma - Spanish
GarfLarf - French
GlitterBerri - Japanese
Gordon CMB - Russian
inductor - Japanese
inetidkm - Korean
Laenthor - French
LUCPIX - Brazilian Portuguese
LuigiBlood - French
Luna - Polish, French (if you absolutely have to)
Mugg1991 - German
Mynecrafto - Spanish
Paul Jensen - Japanese
PikAsriel - Simplified and Traditional Chinese
RaboulLesFritas - French
Sky Yoshi - Japanese
‎SMWHackedHACK - Brazilian Portuguese
SuperGamer18 - Spanish
TempleofDreams - Brazilian Portuguese
Ticamus - French
WaluigiBSOD - Italian
Yoxiz - French
zerojay - French
Жукороп - Bulgarian, Russian

Pages In Need of Translation

An up-to-date list of pages with content that has been manually tagged for translation (using the {{needstranslation}} tag) can be found at Category:Articles needing translation. Additionally, articles simply in need of proofreading or of simply having their translations checked can be found at Category:Articles needing proofread.

If you're looking to translate full pages, the Language Statistics page is a great place to start. It lets you see a list of all pages that are marked for translation, the progress of any translations that have already been made to pages, any pages with outdated sections (due to being re-marked for translation after things changed on the English version of the page), and how much of a translated page has been proofread/reviewed. It's generally a good idea to not proofread your own work (you might miss a mistake you made!), so if you've done the translation for a page, please do not also do the proofreading and reviewing of the page.