[IAEP] Multiple-language pages on wiki

[Mel Chua]

> Do you know how to add several languages in our wiki?

Poking the iaep metabrain, in case someone else has better ideas...

I know of several ways of doing multiple languages with mediawiki, none 
of which are super-ideal.

* the way Wikipedia does it - multiple mediawiki installs, one per 
language (de.wikipedia.org is a separate install from en.wikipedia.org) 
and crosslinks between the different language instances for the same 
term/article. There's no real good way to make sure the content in one 
language is synced with the same content in another.

* the way the OLPC wiki does it: all-in-one-mediawiki-instance, with 
page titles in the different languages. [[Sugar]] and [[Azucar]], for 
instance. Same syncing problem as above.

* There's a nice Google Translate template at the top (see the blue bar 
across the top of http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Summer_of_Content) that 
works pretty well, though it doesn't help people who want to edit in a 
language that the page isn't in.

* Also using http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Summer_of_Content as an example: 
inline translation (BAD IDEA, does not scale). You can see the French 
words inline with the English, and how it makes the page harder to read 
for readers of /either/ language (imo).

I think it matters what we need multiple languages for - do people need 
to be able to edit the same page no matter what language they speak, 
does a page only need to be editable in one language, do the two 
language versions of the same topic need to be in sync or can they 
diverge, is it only one or two pages that need to be bilingual, is 
machine translation ok, etc?

--Mel