Wikipedia:Multilingual coordination

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This page is a short introduction to the Wikipedia's multilingual concepts.
  • The main central place for the coordination of all the Wikimedia projects (in any language) is the Meta-Wiki (located at http://meta.wikimedia.org/).
  • The mailing list to coordinate Wikipedia across different languages is Wikipedia-l.
  • See also the English Wikipedia's embassy, a page for non-native speakers.
Shortcut:
WP:MI

The Wikipedia community is committed to including any and all languages for which there are Wikipedians willing to do the work. We are aware that many of the world's 6,500 languages are not well-represented on computers or the web, and we are committed to working with language speakers and computing organizations to support as many languages as possible.

TRANSLATION DEPARTMENT
RELATED PROJECTS

Each language in Wikipedia currently has a separate set of user accounts. Links between articles in different languages are called interlanguage links or (colloquially and a bit ambiguously) "interwiki".

The URL of the wikipedia for a given language is xx.wikipedia.org, where xx is the 2-letter language code as per ISO 639. For languages without an ISO 639 2-letter language code, the 3-letter language code is used, or if that also does not exist, a custom 3-letter language code is made. (On the mailing list and in discussion, people often write xx: to mean the xx-language wikipedia, as in I'm a regular on fr:.)

Contents

[edit] Encyclopedia projects

Wiki encyclopedias that are at least somewhat active have been started in various languages:

  1. Afrikaans - started on November 16, 2001 - Going steadily to the 10.000 articles.
  2. Albanian (Shqip) - translated language file, six articles as of December 16, 2003
  3. Alemannic (Alemannisch) - started on November 13, 2003 as "Alsatian Wikipedia"
  4. Aragonés
  5. Anglo-Saxon (Englisc) - started on October 14, 2004
  6. Arabic (عربي) - started in July 2003
  7. Asturianu
  8. Armenian (Հայերեն) - started in February 2005, currently in the stage of content building
  9. Aromanian (Armâneashti) - started on May 27, 2004
  10. Aymara (Aymar aru)
  11. Azerbaijani (Azərbaycan) آذربایجان - started in December 2004
  12. Bengali (বাংলা), also known as Bangla - started January 27, 2004 - ১৪ মাঘ, ১৪১০ বঙ্গাব্দ on the Bengali calendar
  13. Basque (Euskara) - started in 2003
  14. Bishnupriya Manipuri (বিষ্ণুপ্রিয়া মণিপুরী) - started on October 2, 2006
  15. Burmese (Bama Sa) - started on July 4, 2003
  16. Belarusian (Беларуская) Started on August 12, 2004.
  17. Breton (Brezhoneg) - started on June 22, 2004
  18. Bosnian (Bosanski) - started on 16 February 2003
  19. Bulgarian (Български) - started on August 3, 2003
  20. Cambodian (ភាសា​ខ្មែរ) - started on May 7, 2004
  21. Cantonese (粵語) - started on March 25, 2006
  22. Catalan (Català) - started on March 16, 2001
  23. Cebuano (Sinugboanong Binisaya) - started on June 22, 2005
  24. Chavacano de Zamboanga - started on October 6, 2006
  25. Chinese (中文) - started in May 2001, Main page made on November 16, 2002
  26. Classical Chinese (古文/文言文) - started on August 1, 2006
  27. Corsican (Corsu) - started on December 9, 2003
  28. Croatian (Hrvatski) started on February 16, 2003
  29. Czech (Česky) - started on May 3, 2002
  30. Danish (Dansk) - started on February 1, 2002
  31. Dutch (Nederlands) - started on August 31, 2001
  32. English - started on January 15, 2001
  33. Esperanto - started on November 15, 2001
  34. Estonian (Eesti) - started on August 24, 2002
  35. Faroese (Føroyskt) - started in December 2003
  36. Finnish (Suomi) - started on February 21, 2002
  37. Fiji Hindi (Fiji Hindi) - started on 26 May 2008
  38. French (Français) - started on March 23, 2001
  39. Frisian (Frysk) - started on September 2, 2002
  40. Friulian (Furlan) - started on January 25, 2005
  41. Galician (Galego) - started on March 8, 2003
  42. Georgian (ქართული)
  43. German (Deutsch) - started on March 16, 2001
  44. Greek (Ελληνικά) - December 1, 2002
  45. Gujarati (ગુજરાતી)
  46. Hebrew (עברית) - started on July 8, 2003
  47. Hindi (हिन्दी) - started on July 11, 2003
  48. Hungarian (Magyar) - started on July 8, 2003
  49. Haitian Creole (kreyòl Ayisyen) - started on August 29, 2004
  50. Icelandic (Íslenska) - unknown, first edit on December 6, 2002 and first edit in Icelandic on December 5, 2003
  51. Ilokano - started on October 2, 2005
  52. Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) - started on November 7, 2003
  53. Interlingua - started on April 29, 2002
  54. Irish (Gaeilge) - started on June 7, 2003
  55. Italian (Italiano) - started in 2001
  56. Japanese (日本語)
  57. Javanese (Basa Jawa) - started on March 7, 2004
  58. Kannada (ಕನ್ನಡ) - started in September 2004
  59. Kashubian (Kaszëbsczi) - started on April 1, 2004
  60. Korean (한국어) - started on October 12, 2002
  61. Kurdish (Kurdî) - started on January 7, 2004
  62. Lao (Lao)- started on June 30, 2004
  63. Latin (Latine) - started on May 22, 2002
  64. Latvian (Latviešu) - started in June 2003
  65. Lithuanian (Lietuviškai) - started on February 19, 2003
  66. Lojban (la lojban) - started on August 8, 2004
  67. Low Saxon (Plattdüütsch / platt / plautdietsch) - started on April 27, 2003
  68. Luxembourgish (Lëtzebuergesch) - started in July 2004
  69. Macedonian (Македонски) - started on May 8, 2004
  70. Malay (Bahasa Melayu) - started on August 12, 2003
  71. Malayalam (മലയാളം) - started on December 20, 2002; More than 5000 articles and 4000 users.
  72. Maltese (Malti) - started on September 11, 2004
  73. Maori (Te Reo Māori) - started in January 2004
  74. Marathi (मराठी) - started on May 1, 2003
  75. Mongolian (Монгол) - started on February 29, 2004
  76. Nahuatl (Nāhuatlahtōlli) - started on August 17, 2003, almost 4000 articles
  77. Nauruan - started on August 9, 2003
  78. Nepal Bhasa (नेपाल भाषा) - started on September 30, 2006
  79. Norman (Nouormand/Normaund) - started in March 2006
  80. Norwegian (bokmål) - started on November 26, 2001
  81. Norwegian (nynorsk) - started on July 31, 2004
  82. Occitan (Occitan) - started on October 20, 2003
  83. Pangasinan - started in October 2006
  84. Persian (فارسی) - started in January 2004
  85. Polish (Polski) - started on September 26, 2001
  86. Portuguese (Português) - started on January 2002
  87. Punjabi (ਪੰਜਾਬੀ / پنجابی) - started on December 23, 2001
  88. Quechua (Runa Simi) - started in 2004, 4600 articles
  89. Romanian (Română) - started on June 19, 2003
  90. Rumantsch - started on December 23, 2003. As of July 7, 2005 there were 40 users who have contributed an approximate total of 89 "legitimate content pages".
  91. Russian (Русский) - started in May 2001 [1]
  92. Samoan - started in late 2004
  93. Sanskrit - started in June 2004
  94. Scottish Gaelic (Ghàidhlig) - started in September 2003
  95. Serbian (Српски) - started on February 16, 2003
  96. Serbocroatian (Srpskohrvatski/Српскохрватски) - reactivated on June 23, 2005
  97. Sicilian - started in October 2004
  98. Simple English
  99. Slovak (Slovenčina) - started on August 13, 2003
  100. Slovene (slovenščina) - started on March 8, 2002
  101. Sotho
  102. Spanish - started on May 20, 2001
  103. Sindhi (سنڌي)- started on Feb 21, 2006
  104. Sunda - much English content waiting for translators; su:User:Kandar does six to ten edits on the average day and gets help from other countries
  105. Swahili (Kiswahili)
  106. Swedish (Svenska) - started on June 3, 2001
  107. Tagalog - started in December 2003
  108. Tamil (தமிழ்) - started on September 30, 2003
  109. Tigrinya - started on March 13, 2004
  110. Taiwanese (Hō-ló-oē; zh-min-nan-TW), called Holopedia at Wikipedia - started on July 30, 2003
  111. Tatar (Tatarça) - started on September 15, 2003
  112. Telugu (తెలుగు) - started on December 9, 2003
  113. Tetum (Tetun) - started in March 25, 2006
  114. Thai (ไทย) - started in December 2003
  115. Turkish (Türkçe) - December 2, 2002
  116. Twi - started in July 2001
  117. Ukrainian (Українська) - January 30, 2004
  118. Urdu (اردو)
  119. Uzbek (O`zbek)
  120. Vietnamese (Tiếng Việt) - restarted on November 12, 2003
  121. Volapük - restarted on January 27, 2004
  122. Walloon (Walon)
  123. Welsh (Cymraeg) - started on March 15, 2003
  124. Yiddish (ייִדיש) - started on March 13, 2004
  125. Zulu (isiZulu) - started on December 12, 2004

For the name Wikipedia in these languages, with raster image, see m:Wikipedia raster name.

[edit] Other projects

There are other, non-Wikimedia, free Wiki-based encyclopedia projects independent of Wikipedia:

[edit] Related projects

[edit] Starting a new language wikipedia

See meta:Meta:Language proposal policy for a tutorial on how to get a Wikipedia in your language running.

A certain amount of "critical mass" is necessary in order for a wiki to "take off". Without 5-10 people eagerly writing and arguing with each other, it wouldn't be as much fun. So we encourage anyone who wants to build a wiki in their own language to also go out and announce/recruit for it.

[edit] Statistics

See also: Wikipedia:Multilingual statistics and Wikipedia:Edits by project and country of origin

As of November 1, 2003, the number of non-English language articles increased to over 50% of the total number, probably for the first time. This is an encouraging sign in favour of linguistic diversity.

As of February 18, 2004, the English language wikipedia had 209,637 articles, while the next 19 had 261,352 on that date, i.e. the number of non-English language articles was more than 55% of the total. The 2nd to 9th languages (de, ja, fr, pl, sv, nl, it, es) together had 210,448 articles, together matching the number of articles in the English language version.

As of May 6, 2004, the English language wikipedia had 261,003 articles, and the 2nd to 8th languages (de 86,269, ja 46,443, fr 35,481, pl 29,209, sv 28,260, nl 27,008, es 22,593) together had 275,263 articles, together matching the number of articles in the English language version. The Chinese (hanyu - zh) wikipedia more than doubled from February 18 to May 6 - from 4,395 to 9,457 entries.

As of 1 September 2004, the English language wikipedia had 337,808 articles, and the 2nd to 7th languages (de 134,190, ja 68,746, fr 50,489, sv 38,637, pl 37,061, nl 34,662) together had 363,785 articles, together matching the number of articles in the English language version.

As of 4 October 2004, the English language wikipedia had 362,104 articles, and the 2nd to 6th languages (de 148,462, ja 75,969, fr 55,608, sv 42,172, pl 40,178) together had 362,389 articles, together matching the number of articles in the English language version.

As of 18 January 2006, the English language wikipedia had 924,618 articles, and the 2nd to 5th languages (de 342,787, fr 225,134, ja 174,052, pl 182,908) together had 924,881 articles, together matching the number of articles in the English language version. The current share of non-English language articles has increased to 71% of the total.

For a table of the largest Wikipedias, see meta:List of Wikipedias#All Wikipedias ordered by number of articles. For an overview of the world's biggest wiki websites (Wikipedia or not), see MeatBall:BiggestWiki.

[edit] Policy issues

[edit] Some questions you might ask

What can I do to help?

I have just noticed the fact that the top and bottom bars are in English. Can something be done about that?

  • Those lines come from a configuration file that the public can't access (I believe). Please see the embassy and the technical mailing list for the ongoing effort to translate Wikipedia into different languages.

Here are some "international Wikipedia" policy questions. To a certain extent, these questions will resolve themselves, though.

  • How are the various Wikipedias going to be coordinated, if at all? Will we have several quite different articles in different languages? Will English be a lingua franca?
    • In the embassy we are coordinating efforts between languages.
  • Is there going to be an easy way to link from one language to another?
  • Please explain the steps to join Wikipedia with a language not in the current development list - e.g. allocation of a wiki space and hosting vs. having own domain for the national wikipedia; initial setup of the pages to be translated; promotion strategies to be adhered to, etc.? Who is in charge for this?
  • Why are the Wikipedias in different languages separate? I.E. why is a separate account and identity required for each language? It seems to me to make more sense if a Wikipedian had the same identity in all Wikipedias. If I already have a user account in the English Wikipedia, and wish to contribute to another language under my name, why do I need to open up yet another account (with a password and cookie)?
    • (Where is the answer to the above?)
    • I was the one who made the above question, more than one year ago. Is there an answer to it at all? lampi 00:08, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
  • What you are looking for is called Unified login or Single-user login; the answer is that the developers have been working on it this whole time, but it is planned for future release. -- phoebe/(talk) 10:35, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Anything else?

  • Is there any place to find a list of *all* mediawiki sites? Why do barely-active languages appear on lists like the wikistats page? etc, etc. +sj+ 13:57, 2004 Mar 14 (UTC)
  • How can I write text in non-Latin texts, what I mean to say is, is there a standard program or something? If anyone knows, please let me know in my My Talk Page. Thanks ThaGrind 10:29, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)
  • It depends on your operating system. In recent versions of Windows, you just need to enable the appropriate input languages by going to the Regional options control panel. For some languages such as Arabic, Hindi, and Thai, you may have to enable complex text support. Then switch the text input language. Recent Linux and Mac operating systems are usually set up for a very wide variety of languages, so you may just have to switch the text input language. - Taxman Talk 22:26, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
  • User:Bst translated one of the tutorial pages into Macedonian. I'm not quite sure what Bst had in mind at the time, and the text was removed as not belonging in the English Wikipedia, but should anyone ever start a Wikipedia in Macedonian, his work is available in the page history of Wikipedia:Tutorial (Editing). Isomorphic 15:24, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)
  • Do the programmers have any plans to join multiple language accounts, of different names, even, to a single login? I'll need to create and maintain another account for my non-English tongue as soon as I finish writing this question, in light of possibility of success of the Community page's recent vote on the 90-day inactivity lockout. It will not affect me yet since I'll have one article per account... however, if future decisions tighten the time limit to just a couple weeks, I might lose one of the accounts. I am aware of the reminder e-mails, but that will get confusing since I'll try to use the same email address for both accounts and won't quite know which I'm getting warned about unless I concentrate a lot. Thanks

Would indeed be very handy. If I want to follow pages in multiple languages, I have to re-login every time.


See also Main Pages Gallery

  • I wanna be a sysop in Turkish. Should I apply in Turkish pages or in English pages?
  • You should apply in the Turkish Wikipedia because if you did so in the English Wikipedia, you will become an admin in the English wiki but not the Turkish wiki. Scott Gall 01:07, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • I have access to professional translating software. The results are not perfect but they are fast. Should I just use the regular Babel templates or would it be usefull to make a distiction between human and AI translations? --Tandarts 22:17, 12 July 2005 (UTC)-- 22:14, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
  • At the WP:TIE it says: "Never user machine translation." It always needs to be redone completely, at least the ones I have seen so far. If you have already posted machine-translations or are going to try it anyway, please list it here: WP:PNT, so someone can clean it up. --Fenice 06:15, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Translation suggestions. It's helpful to have the first article version in 'history' in the source ('foreign') language you're translating from. Also helpful is to clearly state the source of the article. Provide some way to obtain the original source-language article. Please don't just hand over a machine translation. I would 'run-away, run-away'. A human translator can use the original language article to significantly and extensively re-work the machine translation (it'll save writing a few words and phrases). But sometimes it's too confusing and too much work to re-work and untangle the machine translation. Other times a machine translation can be extremely good -- for a few good laughs. Finally, yes, please always make a distinction and always clearly indicate whether it's a human or machine translation.AnFu 13:02, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Q: I remember I've seen somewhere on wikipedia pages, that there is possibillity for learners of a foreing language to translate an article to the language they are learning and then some another wikipedian - native speaker - would check their translation. Unfortunately, I can't find it now. --Kompik 12:26:13, 2005-07-30 (UTC)
  • A: I think the text you have seen was meant for the following kind of situation: Suppose there's a good article in the Bulgarian Wikipedia, and you, knowing Bulgarian, want to put a translation of it into the English Wikipedia, but your English is not great. The advice is then to just go ahead and do it, and let someone else straighten and correct the English. This is the real Wikipedia spirit of working together to achieve more than one could do alone! Geke 23:32, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Is there one place to find lists of templates, pages, and terms in each language, on one page? For example, I am looking for the templates for {{doppelganger}} in each language, so I can protect some non-English accounts from impersonators. Is there a page where I can find this template, and see a list of its counterparts in various languages? Or, for instance, a list of links to Administrator Noticeboards, or Vandalism in Progress pages, all listed on one page for all languges? Thanks. paul klenk talk 19:00, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Which article appears in the most languages? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.38.152.40 (talk) 16:27, 18 January 2006
    • Currently, India has the most interlanguage links. I checked it on February 25, and it had 127 interlanguage links. Looking again today, it has 146. The page that actually exists in the most languages, though, is probably Main Page. Look at some other languages, and they have interlanguage links down the left side on the Main Page. English Wikipedia doesn't currently have that, instead using the grouping you see on the bottom of the .en main page. --Mr. Billion 19:32, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Just curious, why is the Czech language represented by the adverb česky ("in Czech", "in the Czech way") and not the noun čeština ("the Czech language")? I mean, if nothing else, for consistency with Slovak and Slovenian. --4.240.72.147 01:52, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

  • Do I need to make a separate account for every language of Wikipedia that I want to participate in? Or is there a way of using my English login for, say, the French Wikipedia? Nathans 03:19, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Well, my edit of a German article refused to recognize my en: name, so I just created an identical account for de:wikipedia. I wasn't able to find how to set up a single account for the languages I work in. GreggEdwards 22:20, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Yes, you need a diferent account for every language. Known as Vidarfe in the norwegian wiki 83.108.103.32 08:42, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Q: I am from Thai Wikipedia and we are looking for ways to change the time to match the local time in Thailand. However, I do not know how to do that nor where to ask someone to set this up for us. Please give us some pointers. Thanks! --Jutiphan 02:55, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
  • A: Like Wikipedia, the time is global: it's in UTC (formerly "Greenwhich Time"), independent of your location.Geke 23:43, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
    Each user can change the time they see. Click on "my preferences" at the top of the page, after you log in. It's the third link, after your username and "my talk". After clicking on it, then you can click on "date and time" and set it to the time zone you want. --Coppertwig 21:10, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
  • A wish : to have mostly language-independent templates, such as geotags (long, lat), 'standardised' across various wikis. Already difficult in one wiki, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Geographical coordinates. Assuming a consensus is achieved on the english wiki, what would be the process to push it across other wikis? universimmedia 09:00, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
We can't decide something within the English community and then expect everyone else to give way to our decision. No, it needs to be discussed with everyone together, which might well be impossible, but contributors from other Wikimedia projects could be invited nevertheless. Meta might be the correct place for that, using any language, though it's currently being discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geographical coordinates#Formats, with people who use the data from all major projects participating. --Para 12:32, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Q:Hello, in the last weeks several wikipedias have boomed from having a few thousands articles to almost 20k. It's the case of Volapük, Newar/Nepal Bhasa, Telugu, Bishnupriya Manipuri or Ido. They all have depths below 4 and comprise thousand of bot-created almost identical geographical stubs. I find unfair that they rank higher on the list that wikipedias like Norwegian (Nynorsk) or Persian. People on those sites are working hard to perfect and create articles. Isn't there any kind of regulation to make wikipedia a place where real work is rewarded? Thanks.
Ido has never used a bot to write pages. Mithridates 21:33, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
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