Welcome to the October 2024 edition of the Language and internationalization newsletter by the Wikimedia Foundation Language and Product Localization team! This newsletter provides you with quarterly updates on new feature developments, improvements in various language-related technical projects and support work, community meetings, and ideas to get involved in contributing to the projects.

Key highlights

Mooré Wikipedia is live!

Mooré is a language spoken by over 6 million people across Africa, yet remains largely underrepresented online. The Mooré language community have been taking steps for onboarding the language to Wikimedia projects, including translating the most used important messages on Translatewiki.net. However, a critical issue had been blocking the creation of the Mooré Language Wikipedia. The problem was that the Manual of Style (MOS) namespace on English Wikipedia conflicted with the interwiki prefix for the Mooré language, which also uses the code “MOS.” This issue was resolved by elevating the pseudo-namespace MOS to a real namespace on 12 wikis, including English Wikipedia, thus unblocking the creation of the Mooré Wikipedia, which went live in September ^[1] ^[2]! This achievement has paved the way for a vibrant language community and its passionate contributors, who are now focused on boosting their online presence.

Enabling Translation Tools for Low-Resourced Languages

Translation tools, such as Content and Section Translation, were enabled on 25 Wikipedias ^[3] that currently lack machine translation support, including Hakka Chinese, Western Punjabi and Upper Sorbian. Normally, these tools are not available for languages without machine translation due to insufficient data. However, manually translating Wikipedia articles could provide the data needed to train translation models for these languages. By making these translation tools more visible now, we could encourage manual translations that may eventually enable machine translation support for these languages.

Recently, Google Translate added support for several new languages ^[4], showing how machine translation expands when enough data is available. Currently, 59 languages with machine translation support are enabled in the Content Translation tool for several Wikipedias ^[5].

Keyboard Layouts for Multiple Languages Added, Including Silesian

Numerous keyboard input methods, including Silesian, are now available in Wikimedia projects! For users, this means they can now type and contribute content on Wikimedia projects in these native languages. A big thank you to User:Bennylin, User:Krol111 and other volunteers for their contributions! ❤️ The addition of keyboard support for Silesian ^[6] gained traction during Wikimania in Poland this year, where language support was a dedicated Hackathon track. This highlights Silesian’s importance as a cultural and linguistic identity in the region. In the keyboard support area, there are now layouts for Silesian, Duala, Akan, Jawi, Krio, and more. For further development and contributions, please visit the project repository at GitHub – jquery.ime. You can also view the recent updates here: GitHub Commits.

New Projects Added to Translatewiki.net, Including VideoWiki

Translatewiki.net is a collaborative platform for translating and localizing software projects. Initially focused on the localization of MediaWiki, the platform is now widely used for several Wikimedia projects, along with other open-source initiatives like KDE. Users can contribute translations for software interface messages for projects on Translatewiki.net. Recently, six projects were added, including four Wikimedia projects—VideoWiki ^[7], CapacityExchange ^[8], Feverfew ^[9], Community Requests ^[10], and two external projects: UserProfileV2 ^[11], OpenHistoricalMap’s Overpass Turbo instance ^[12].

Language Support for New and Existing Languages

17 Languages were added to translatewiki.net, including Interslavic ^[13], Ngiemboon ^[14] and Jju ^[15]. Speakers of these languages can now translate MediaWiki user interface messages as part of the new wiki creation process.

10 Languages were added to Mediawiki, including Iban ^[16], Haryanvi ^[17], Saint Lucian Creole ^[18]. This allows speakers of these languages to help translate the software and content on various Wikimedia websites into their own language.

18 Configuration fixes were implemented, such as renaming autonyms ^[19], adding or modifying namespace translations ^[20] and adding RTL (Right-to-Left) support for InternetArchiveBot ^[21]. Learn more here: Language and Product Localization Technical Support Status Updates Q1 2024-25.

Topic-Based Filtering for Content Translation on Mobile

Translators using Content Translation on mobile can now personalize their article suggestions with 41 filtering options. This feature helps translators find articles aligned with their interests, making translations more relevant. The basics for topic-based suggestions is already available across the 287 Wikipedias where the mobile version of Content Translation is enabled. Users can now easily choose from popular articles and categories like Geography, Culture, History, Society, and more. This development is part of a broader ongoing project aimed at helping organizers identify and add relevant content based on high-impact topics to their Wikipedias. More details can be found here: Translation suggestions: Topic-based & Community-defined lists.

Screen record of topic-based filtering in Content Translation tool

Community meetings and events

A session on language support was hosted at the Wikindaba Hackathon, discussing how volunteers can contribute to testing internationalization and localization to ensure software usability in their languages. The importance of surfacing language-specific issues was emphasized to ensure they receive the necessary technical support and community involvement to resolve them. Ahead of the Wikindaba Hackathon, Khoehoe was added to translatewiki.net, along with a new keyboard for the language ^[22]. This initiative is part of the Khoe, Saan, and Xam’issa Language Project, aiming to promote editing and language incubation in Wikipedia for Khoe, Saan, and Kaaps languages.
At the Let’s Connect Technology for Language Diversity session, the role of technology in supporting language diversity on Wikimedia projects was explored, with a focus on growth and incubation technologies. Participants engaged in a hands-on workshop using Translatewiki.net and Section Translation tools and shared positive experiences with the latter for adding citations.
A session on the future of language incubation was hosted at the Celtic Knot Conference, discussing improvements to the onboarding process for new languages on Wikimedia platforms.
Multiple sessions on language tools, onboarding, and strategies for developing Nigeria’s local languages were hosted at Wikiconference Nigeria, engaging over 70 attendees.
A session on the state of language technology and onboarding at Wikimedia was hosted at Wikimania, exploring current tools and discussion on improving the language onboarding experience across Wikimedia platforms. The Language support track at the Wikimania Hackathon focused on addressing technical requests for new and existing language communities across Wikimedia projects.
In case you missed the language community meeting in August, you can catch up by watching the video recording and reading the notes. This meeting had over 35 attendees, covering topics such as mapping language documentation initiatives, updates on the Language Diversity Hub, and a report on supporting South African languages during the Wikimania hackathon. Sign up here to attend the upcoming meeting in November.

Translatewiki hackathon session at WikiIndaba

Get involved

If you are looking for technical tasks, take a look at the easy tasks that haven’t been assigned yet in various language project repositories on Wikimedia Phabricator.
Interested in contributing to language support related technical tasks for new and existing languages? See open tasks on LPL Technical Support workboard.
If you are looking for tools to edit and translate articles and interface messages, you can use Content translation and Special:Translate on Translatewiki.net. These tools make it easier to work with content in different languages.
Report feedback on talk pages of language tools.

Stay tuned for the next release! You can subscribe to this newsletter.

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