[IAEP] Multiple-language pages on wiki

[Simon Schampijer]

On 01/13/2010 02:52 PM, Mel Chua wrote:
>> 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
>

Thanks to Mel at least the wonderful Planetarium page describing the 
Berlin Pilot is live in two languages: 
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Planetarium

Thanks,
    Simon

PS: Mel did as well the translation from German to English!!!