Community Wishlist Survey 2021/Translation/Translation tool for wikitext snippets

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Translation tool for wikitext snippets

  • Problem: AFAIK Translator only works for whole existing pages, and if you need only a part of the content from somewhere it cannot be used if target page already exists. Also, such translator could be used in case of bugs while loading the original page, which occurs from time to time.
  • Who would benefit: All
  • Proposed solution: Implement translator functionality to enable wikitext snippet input as an alternative to page focused approach. After wikitext is copied into the translator input window, the translator should continue to function in visual mode, and the final result should be available again as a wikitext or alternatively as a page in user space.
  • More comments:
  • Phabricator tickets:
  • Proposer: Imbehind 21:00, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

  • If I understand correctly and you're talking about Content translation, this suggestion is the same as what the upcoming Section translation feature of the ContentTranslation extension will do. This project is already in development, so it doesn't have to compete in the wishlist vote :) --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 18:47, 26 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    @Imbehind: Does Amir understand you correctly? If so, we will archive this wish as it's already being worked on. Thanks, MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 03:01, 3 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    @MusikAnimal (WMF):, @Amire80: - not necessarily. Section translation would be a big improvement, of course, but why don't just go all the way? New sentences of wikitext, for example, once inserted in the original text, would not be translatable via section translator feature, or could be, but it would be complicated. Also, there is often an example of ordinary text to be newly inserted into the article and translated, not inserted anywhere within WP before. Or if you want to translate a snippet of related page to be inserted on different target language page. I could go on and on. All of that would be easily solved with one button which would display a modal window for arbitrary wikitext insertion. Once the wikitext is inserted, switch to VE, and after the translation is done you could either save the snippet in your user space, as a new page, or (even better) copy/paste the translated wikitext into the article you are working on. For instance, I'm working on evolution related content. As such, I often have the need to pick and choose at least 10-15 snippets from English wiki article, translate them, and insert them into the Croatian wiki. Those snippets are from different sections, say 2-3 from each. If I would need to use by section translation, it would complicate my work considerably. The alternative would be to give the users the ability to translate any page in their user space to any language - I would prepare the snippets within my userspace, translate, save, and than copy to the article. I would still prefer copy/paste arbitrary wikitext approach in any case. Cheers! Imbehind 04:15, 3 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    User:Imbehind, thanks for the clarification! What do you think about Community Wishlist Survey 2021/Miscellaneous/Templates translation? See the section at the bottom, "Practical suggestion: refactor CX template adaptation". What you suggest here sounds very similar to what I suggest there: a panel that allows the translation of a template from one wiki to another. I even added mock-ups there. My suggestion there is more modest, only talking about automatic translation of the template title and parameters, and leaving the translation of parameter values to the human editor. But if this is done, it can later be easily extended to covering any wikitext and not just templates. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 07:43, 3 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    @Amire80:, I'm not sure if your template request is more modest. It doesn't sound complicated but for my proposal, everything apart from a button and modal window for input and output is already there. I'm not sure the same could be said about the templates, but your proposal is also worthwile. Imbehind 14:00, 3 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • FYI: snippet

Voting