Licensing tutorial

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This is an open translation request

  • Please help translate it.
Preview of the original artwork (in English)
Please read this page carefully before translating.

The licensing tutorial is an illustrated educational comic strip for Wikimedia Commons, explaining the basics of copyright and free licenses. It was created in 2010 as part of the Multimedia usability project. It will be integrated into the software interface of the Upload wizard.

This page provides recommendations and instructions to translate and localize the tutorial. If you have any doubt, question or comment about the meaning, please ask on the talk page. The content was carefully written and collaboratively improved; it's important to get the translation and localization right. Guillaume Paumier coordinated the Licensing tutorial project.

The translation of the text is separate from the modification of the artwork. If you're a translator but you don't know how to edit the image, someone else can take care of it.

Translation of the text[edit]

General remarks[edit]

  • Keep it short: the text has to fit in a limited space within the artwork. We've tried to leave enough space so that the format works even for verbose languages, but we still don't want the document to appear too busy. It's a good idea to compare the length of your translated sentences with the length of the English source sentence.
  • If your text can't be shortened to fit in the available space, ask on the talk page for advice.

Specific pieces of advice[edit]

  • You may want to reuse some content from the first section of the "own work" upload page in your language on Commons (examples: Deutsch, Español)
  • The last sentence ("Still unsure? Ask the Help desk") may be difficult to localize, since the "Help desk" on Commons is mostly in English. You don't have to explicitly mention the Help desk. Feel free to translate liberally (e.g. "Do you need help? Ask if you're unsure"); This part of the picture will have a link to the local village pump in your language on Commons, if it exists. Otherwise, it will link to the (multilingual) help desk. This section will contain a link to that page.

Localization of the artwork[edit]

  • Many languages have a short equivalent (4 to 5 characters) to "STOP" (see commons:Stop) and "OK". If your language doesn't have one of these, possible alternatives include a check mark or a red light/green light symbol. Please ask on the talk page.
  • If the red octagonal stop sign or the green circle + yellow ribbon doesn't work in your language, please bring it up on the talk page, so we can find a good alternative. For example, the Japanese stop sign is an inverted triangle.
  • If you want to suggest a change in colors, for example because the default colors have a different meaning in your culture, please do so on the talk page.
  • Please use the DejaVu fonts if possible, and avoid converting the text to path. This will make corrections and future changes easier. If your language uses a non-latin font, please indicate which one you used, so that we can see if it's available on Wikimedia servers for rendering.
  • Note that the two sentences from the summary STOP box are switched in the translation.

Uploading the file to Wikimedia Commons[edit]

Once the translation has been done and reviewed, and the localized version of the comic strip has been done and reviewed, the tile can be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.

  • Please use the same license and description as the original document. Add the translators' name to the list of authors.
  • Don't forget to add the Category:Wikimedia Commons licensing tutorial
  • The file will be automatically fetched by the software. Therefore, it is mandatory to adhere to a strict naming convention: use the name File:Licensing tutorial XX.svg where XX is the code of your language. Usually, this is the same language code as your local project. If you're unsure, you can check the MediaWiki list of language codes.
  • Ask an administrator at Wikimedia Commons to protect the file, since it'll be part of the software interface.