Meta talk:Templates for translating language names

For a quick explanation of the main issues, see the article page.

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Discussion moved from user talk page

This was moved from User talk:Dcljr#Lang name templates by dcljr 10:44, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Should I, or should I not, continue this effort? - dcljr 04:15, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think you began a good effort. Keep it up. And I suggest some additional languages will make your table more useful - how about adding French, Russian and Chinese messages? Perhaps you can utilize Babylon (translators' noticeboard) or Babel for such expantion. --Aphaia | Translate Election | ++ 05:34, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you're talking about my "I speak..." tables, but my primary concern right now is whether I should be developing pages of language-name templates like this one in German. I'll be expanding the other tables as I find the time. Oh, and thanks for the links. - dcljr 09:43, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I am sorry but I can not understand your dialogue: I propose we open a page for thiscussing this project. By the way my message about the tempalte H-Langs:* was that at the moment the help template scheme is complicate and often changing, so I would prefear to introduce another level of templete, if not really needed or not previously discussed and tested AnyFile 10:03, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

By the way, I suppose you work with Sureanna, but have you noticed Patrick's templates? I think his are more enigmatic but handy than your current ones. See Template:Nen and its talk. --Aphaia | Translate Election | ++ 19:51, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Do you prefer the way like "Template:Lang name - en (zh)"? It is okay to me (or equal to me), but would you like to create over 200^2 templates? I assume if we follow Patrick's way we need to create 200*2 templates and that's all. Unless you limit Lang name template to only major languages, it would be not feasible, I'm afraid. --Aphaia | Translate Election | ++ 20:28, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've created the page Meta:Templates for translating language names. Let's continue this dicsussion there (on the talk page). - dcljr 21:17, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Feasibility of two approaches

1. 199*199 templates, each translating one language name into one other

   Example:{{Lang name - en (de)}} gives: Englisch

   Pros:

   • very simple — encourages people to help create and maintain accurate templates
   • low server overhead — allows many such templates to appear on one page (see, for example User:Dcljr/Interlanguage/de)
   • helps with division of labor — pages like the one above can be made for both "source" and "target" languages separately, so people can easily contribute only the information they know; more people contributing means quicker development of the templates

   Cons:

   • requires many, many templates
   • long to write. (Aphaia)
     • The name of the template can always be shortened. Example: {{ln en-de}} - dcljr
   • if you don't need the lang code of target language, you can't utilize it - perhaps faster pick it up from your dictionary. (Aphaia)

2. 199 templates, each translating one language name into any other

   Example:

   • {{Nen|de}} gives: Englisch
   • note: Template:Nen contains {{p{{{1}}}|de=Englisch|en=English|es=Inglés|ja=英語}}

   Pros:

   • smaller number of templates required
   • handy to write (Aphaia)

   Cons:

   • higher server overhead? — would having 199 of these on one page (as with the link above) cause problems?
   • more complicated — discourages contributions from those who know language names but are not comfortable with template wikicode

Of course, the exact names of the templates can be changed. That's not important. But which approach should be used? Is there another possibility? - dcljr 21:17, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I perfer {{Nen|de}} way. And from my experience for practical purpose we need a few basic set, in which we provice our official statements. Other languages are welcome too, but not necessary in urgent.

Honestly I can't figure why we should generate "my native language is [XXXX]", practically 1. We have already Babel template, and I think it is visible what is a native language of some users. It is kind to make such a notice in each language, spcially in the category Users-xx, but I don't think we should do in each page. 2. this notice is meaningless if the reader can't read English thus doesn't understand what means the former part "native language". ISO language code is practical and enough good for our daily purpose.

On the other hand, we need to write each language in some more formal documents, like "this announcement is now available in those languages: English, German ...", so I don't think this attempt is not useless and welcome heartfully. But it is useful on the WMF sites or other official announcement rather than our frequently updated meta things. --Aphaia | Translate Election | ++ 22:15, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The "native language" example was only an illustration of how the template could be used. I'm not suggesting we "generate" such text automatically. - dcljr 07:18, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Actually I do not belive a template like {{Nen|de}} would be useful in general situation. It would produce a complete (and long list). I would like to propose to start to create template like {{lang en}}, which just give the language name in its own language. Useful for case like "this page in Deutsch (de) | English | Français | Italiano " AnyFile 08:31, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No, {{Nen|de}} gives Englisch, not a list; it can be used in various lists.--Patrick 10:09, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I didn't known that a template could select a value of an array of values, I have to study whether this approach can be useful (but I'm currently too busy, sorry). The template {{Nen|de}} is interesting, but I've to say that its name is too short: the first time anyone see it will have no idea of its possible use. Long names requires more time, but a piece of code is read several times and it's written only once. Yes, {{Lang name - en (de)}} is too long, but it is not designed to be used directly, but through shortcuts (but with a meaningful name). I will give my opinion ASAP, bye. --surueña 11:01, 2005 Apr 30 (UTC)

From comparing the code with the rendered text the meaning is clear if you know the language the word is in. However, we could add a blank space: {{n en|de}}--Patrick 18:53, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

With the second method, for editing it seems better to have each template contain the names of all languages expressed in a given language, instead of a given language expressed in all languages, as it is now.--Patrick 20:05, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Any way you choose, to you and to others will seem more useful the opposite way :-) (Murphy's Law). But actually the way taht "each template contain the names of all languages expressed in a given language" has the advantage that a person (who know one language) has to edit only one template. AnyFile 21:04, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Scalability

My main concern is the scalability of the "all languages in one template" approach. Practically speaking, there are fewer than 100 languages in active use on the various 'pedias (even though 199 of them exist), but even at that number wouldn't the template(s) be pretty difficult to edit/maintain? I mean, over time the languages wouldn't necessarily be added to the template in any particular order, so finding whether a language is in there at all would be a pain once it got to a certain size. Not to mention that we might want to allow either the 2- or 3-letter ISO 639 codes for langs with both. That would make the templates even bigger. On the other hand, with many simple "one-name-only" templates, you can list a ton of them on a page (as in my oft-cited example) and see right away which are missing or incorrect. Pages like this can be generated automatically based on a master list of language codes. - dcljr 22:13, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Making such lists can be done anyway, see e.g. Template talk:Lan is mr.--Patrick 07:27, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

However, I am not sure how entries with wrong language codes (which are ignored but clutter the template) can easily be detected. Keeping an alphabetic order would probably be wise, that would help. The same question could arise with "one-name-only" templates (wrong code, therefore not used), but this is less likely because they are typically created by following a link.--Patrick 08:03, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

I give up

I give up. Having looked around (off and on over the past few weeks) at some of the "resources" for multilingualism around here, I have to say the situation is a complete mess. Seems like each type of resource has at least 2 or 3 different pages (templates, categories, etc.) trying to address the same problem/issue. I'm not going to do anything more in the main namespaces on this until the situation becomes more coherent (or until someone can point me to where people are discussing how to make the situation more coherent — am I gonna have to join a mailing list?). In the meantime, I'll be working in my user space... - dcljr 08:25, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)