The Wikimedia Language Engineering team continued to develop additional features for Translate UX (TUX) and to fix bugs, including a number of critical bugs that affected Microsoft Internet Explorer. TUX has now been deployed on Wikimedia sites and on translatewiki.net. The team also launched the new outreach program, called Language Mavens, and conducted an office hour.
Redesigning the main page of translatewiki.net
As part of the original specifications for TUX, the translatewiki.net main page is being redesigned. The layout will now include a set of tiles for the project groups that will contain the projects’ logo and statistics. The links conveniently placed on the tiles can be used to access the project messages for translation and proofreading. Once logged in, users will be presented with summarized statistics of their recent activities.
Significant changes are also planned for the account sign-up form. Along with features that will allow newly signed-up users to familiarize themselves with the translation workflow, it’ll make the process of getting the translation permissions smoother. The page will also include artwork to depict cultural diversity from around the world. The main page is currently under preparation, but the special page can already be accessed on translatewiki.net.
Language Mavens: The new outreach program
Language Mavens, the new outreach program for the Language Engineering team, was launched to provide better support to the various language communities within Wikimedia projects. The program was announced during the monthly office-hour (read the logs). After a meeting with the initial group of participants, the pilot phase is now underway. The program aims to regularly connect with the language communities across the Wikimedia projects to get feedback about the user experience and any improvements needed in the language support features. To optimize the internationalization tools and workflows, the program will also facilitate participation in activities such as bug triages and testing days. The team will hold regular meetings with the Maven team members. The program is open for participation, and new members can sign up online. To get more details about the program, you can read the program’s description and write to runa at wikimedia dot org.
Up next
For the next development sprints, the team will continue to work on the projects mentioned above, and also devote significant efforts on redesigning the Universal Language Selector (ULS) interface based on the design review document. The Language Engineering team will host a community bug triage session on April 24th, 2013 at 17:00 UTC. The team also invites students participating in Google’s Summer of Code 2013, to work with them on several internationalization projects.
To know more about our projects and ways to participate, please find us on the IRC channel #mediawiki-i18n (Freenode) or write to runa at wikimedia dot org.
Runa Bhattacharjee, Outreach and QA coordinator, Language Engineering
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