To #Translate on #Wikimedia Meta

Providing adequate tools at Meta has been a holy grail for the developers of the Translate extension. To get to this stage a page translation mode was developed a long time ago. This has been in use successfully at KDE for the translation of its user documentation.

Having tools to manage texts that need translation is extremely valuable when the message can and does alter. This has always been the case for the Wikimedia Fundraiser and it was more or less managed with templates. The Translate extension brings the kind of functionality that cannot be managed with templates.

Making use of the Translate extension also unifies the skills needed for the translation and localisation of the fund raiser. One other and essential part of the fundraiser is the software that has always been localised at translatewiki.net.

At this time Translate has just been implemented and everybody is granted the privilege to translate. Only some people can enable a page for translation. As a consequence the only page currently available for translation is a test page explaining page translation.

It was important to get the software ready as soon as possible because the annual fundraiser is already quite near. Thanks to Niklas, Siebrand, Roan and Sam it has been realised. Testing at Meta materialised a final bug that will be fixed before Translate will be used in earnest.
Thanks,
       GerardM