Good day,
Sorry for being absent for a few days now, but I was doing some rather extensive research for a scientific report I need to write in order to pass the regional equivalent of what most know as the “A-levels”. However, I’ve still occasionally found some time to deduce how the translation extension works properly. I’ve found out the following:
1.) The way the translation and language tags need to be set apparently has changed between the time someone first introduced them to the Whonix-Wiki and now. What I could find out was that, just like you may see on the front page, earlier builds/versions of the extensions needed a manual separation of the translatable area. What I mean by this is, that it was necessary, to manually put the tags between each and every part of the text to translate it. However, fortunately, this has changed some time ago. Now, the tags only need to be set ONCE at the top and bottom of a page, as you may see here: Permission error - Whonix
The extension then automatically separates what is necessary for translation. This also solves the problem I had with the front-page, that things like the “download box” couldn’t be translated, as you may see here: https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Comparison_of_different_Whonix_variants/de Everything in the box was easily translatable.
So we should simply do the same for the front-page and the problem is solved, right? To be honest, I couldn’t find out, whether this would simply allow editing the entire homepage and keep all the current translation by other people (which would be great) or not. If the later is the case, such a change would have to be organised on an extremely exact level, as to not loose anything. Sadly, currently, as you may see for example here: https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Main_Page/pl on the polish version, every language suffers from the problems in regard to the language tags.
2.) Regarding the /en thing, I have a theory. The thing is, that this has nothing to do with how the extension works, after all, sites translated by me or the front-page never suffered from this problem, but rather, that someone translated the page to English. You can easily deduce it by the words:
This page is a translated version of the page Starting Whonix and the translation is 100% complete.
Which are on the page you’ve linked, even when looking at the English version. That is the key to the problem. Furthermore, if you just visit: https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Starting_Whonix/ without the /en at the end, you find an empty page. Now, I can’t read the logs for the “translated version” (or my mental capacity is insufficient for doing so) though I can definitely tell that no one ever wrote anything on the original (without /en) version.
3.) Just a small question: To keep people from having problems with this extension, I would be more than willing to write a short guide on the ins and outs, if that is wanted. Furthermore, I would like to ask, whether it is OK if I mark some of the pages for translation, which are currently in queue for doing so? Because, as stated before, being even able to use the extension on a new page, is already a pretty hard endeavour. This would allow people to already put in what they believe to be a proper translation, however, as far as I could understand the exstension, this doesn’t allow anyone to create a new page. What they would put in would get to review and after that, if the quality holds up, it would be activated.
4.) Now, last but not least, a question which, to keep the translations homogeneous, needs to be discussed: Translate the names of links or keep them in English. And, if the former is the case, should a (English) be added, so that readers may know that the page is in a different language? Also, is using a translated version of a page (if available) a good idea or not? Translations, and here comes a moment of sincerity, are sadly always to a certain degree different in their message, when compared to the original (just look at the Snowden Interview by the ARD last year). So that should also be considered.
Have a nice day,
Ego