Prerequesites
Determining the source wiki
The translation mechanism requires one source and one or multiple target wiki. The content language of the source wiki determines what wiki instance is the source wiki in the farm. For example, if the root wiki is installed as a German wiki (DE as content language), then there must be an instance in the wiki named DE. This is the source wiki from which translations can be pushed to other language wikis.
If a wiki farm requires a different setup, the server configuration has to be changed according to requirements (on-premise installations only).
Translation workflows
Translation of a page
Pages can be translated from the source wiki and automatically created in another language wiki instance.
To translate a page:
- Click on the
Translatelink in the toolbar on the source page. A dialogue opens. - Select the desired target language.
- Click
Translateto start the translation. - Check the suggested page name in the target wiki and change it if necessary. This dialogue box only appears for the first translation of the page.
- Click
Translateagain to save the page name. The translation is displayed. - Click
Saveto save the translated page in the target wiki. You can now go directly to the page in the target wiki, translate it into another language (if configured) or close the dialogue box without taking any further action.
-
Translation button -
Language selection dialogue -
Customise page title -
Page translation display and confirmation -
Link between the language versions
Merge page content
If a page has already been translated, subsequent translations overwrite the previous page.
However, it is possible to configure in the server to first store subsequent translations in a draft namespace. Users than have to merge any changes between the translation revisions manually. In this case, see the documentation of the MergeArticles extension.
Additional information about the translation
The translated content during the translation process includes:
- Content of the page
- Display title (and optional real title)
- Categories
- only for initial translations; subsequent translations keep the original translation)
- however, the category pages are not created, only the category link is transferred
- Internal links
- Links to other internal pages are also adjusted to point to the correct translated page.
- Example: If the German page A links to the German page B, the English translation page A will link to the English translation page B.
- The embedded files/images on the source page are transferred to the target page without being translated or renamed.
- Templates and template calls in the wikitext are not translated, but are transferred with their original names. The templates can then be adapted manually or translated manually in the target wiki if necessary.
- Transcluded pages are also transferred without translation
- Code blocks are not translated.
- Translations are linked in the language changer (link to the same page in the other language wikis)
- Limitation: If a page is too long / large, the DeepL API cannot translate it. The best option is to divide the page into smaller subpages
Exclude file from translation
A tag can be inserted on the source page to exclude the file transfer for a specific page from the translation process.
In this way, the changes made in the target system are not overwritten during the next translation.
To do this, the user must insert the tag on the source page that contains the files to be excluded from the translation process.
Steps to exclude files from translation:
- Add the tag
in the source code of the source page - Add the files to the source page
- Translate the page into the target language
- The placeholder from the file is transferred, but the file is not. The file is therefore shown as ‘incorrect’ on the page. This allows users to see that files are missing and may need to be replaced.
Note: If the file already exists on EN Wiki, the file will be displayed correctly.
Translation overview
An overview of all translations is available under Special:TranslationsOverview.
Translation Dictionary
The dictionary with all page titles and links can be viewed under Special:TranslationDictionary.
If the title of a target page needs to be adapted after the first translation, this can be done on this special page.
If a source page is renamed, the titles are automatically retranslated and the title translations are updated in the database and in the wiki.
The different translation versions are still linked correctly. The redirect selected on the source page is also set up on the corresponding target pages.
Translation glossary
Glossary entries for the translation can be maintained on the Special:TranslationsGlossary page. This ensures that certain terms from the source language are always translated with a specific term from the target language. This applies to both the page title and the normal page content.
The maintained wiki glossary is transferred to the DeepL glossary and used in the translation.
(See the list of supported glossary languages in the DeepL documentation)
Additional information
Configuration of wiki structure and namespaces
- The translation processes (i.e. which wiki/language can be translated into which wiki/language) must be configured.
- The farm may contain some wiki instances that do not use translation workflows.
- Caution: DeepL translation is not available in all existing languages.
The links between the source and target namespaces must be maintained under Special:BlueSpiceConfigManager and BlueSpiceTranslationTransfer extension.
For example, the pages from the DE source namespace ‘Finanzen’ must be translated into the EN target namespace ‘Finance’.
If the pages must first be created in the draft namespace after translation, this must also be configured in the backend.
Configuration DeepL API
The configuration is required in the source wiki.
The DeepL API configuration can be accessed from the Feature Content Structuring.
Ad-hoc Translation
The AdhocTranslation extension translates a wiki page directly into the user's language.
If users have set a language other than the installation language of the wiki as the user language in their settings, the link Translate to my language appears in the toolbar of the page.
After clicking on the link, the page content is displayed translated. After reloading the page, the actual content of the page is displayed again.
Configuration
The configuration is required in each relevant instance.
The DeepL API configuration can be accessed from the Feature Content Structuring.
