OKA/Instructions for editors: translating into non-English Wikipedia

This document contains the instructions provided to freelancers receiving grants from the Open Knowledge Association (OKA) for translating Wikipedia articles. For transparency, it is publicly available.

OKA aims to develop the free dissemination of open content throughout the world. To do so, it provides financial monthly grants to full-time Wikipedia editors. More info here.

Disclaimer to OKA editors: OKA is not affiliated with Wikimedia. The information below is provided as advice only – Wikipedia policies will always have precedence. When editing Wikipedia, you should make sure to comply with Wikipedia policies. In case any guidance provided in this document contradicts Wikimedia guidelines, please flag it through a comment in the document or by contacting infookawiki

Intro: Translating from English into other languages

Each Wikipedia has its own guidelines, so when translating pages from English to another language, the process will look slightly different than when translating pages from another language into English.

This document provides an overview of the key differences, as well as general tips for publishing articles into other language Wikipedias.

Before reading this, you should make sure that you are already familiar with the more general translation instructions for the English Wikipedia, because the current document only covers differences. If something is not specifically mentioned, you should assume that the guidelines are the same as for English.

Prioritization of articles to translate

Other Wikipedias are by far not as comprehensive as the English Wikipedia, so we need to be stricter when selecting which pages to translate.

Unlike EN wikipedia, for which we translate the majority of pages that meet our quality standards, for other languages we translate primarily based on the importance of the topic and the number of views. This means, for example, that an article that would have been ranked as “Priority 1” for English may be ranked as “Priority 6” for Portuguese or Spanish.

Because this is a more complex assessment, the prioritization is done primarily by OKA admins, using external tools (e.g., to find articles with the highest number of monthly views). This means that, unlike for EN, translators do not usually add articles to the list. However, if there are specific articles that you would like to translate (e.g., because you are interested in the topic), you are still free to pick any of them: the article tracker is only a recommendation and you do not have to stick to it.

Step by step guide

Prerequisites

Note that the following step-by-step guide is sufficient to publish your first ES/PT articles, but is not comprehensive. The ultimate reference for editing the Spanish/Portuguese Wikipedia should be:

• PT: Livro de estilo & Palavras a evitar

• ES: Manual de estilo & Palabras a evitar

You are not required to read the entire manuals in your first two weeks (80h of work) as an ES/PT wiki translator, but you should start reading them after that. Once you have completed your first month (173h) of translating for ES/PT wiki, you must have read and be familiar with both manuals before contributing further.

Initial setup

Disclosing your affiliation with OKA:

As with the EN Wikipedia, to comply with Wikipedia's requirement to disclose paid contributions, you are required to add the equivalent disclaimer to your user page in the Wikipedia version in which you will publish:

• PT:

Recebo uma pequena bolsa da Open Knowledge Association (OKA) para apoiar meu trabalho na Wikipédia. No entanto, as contribuições que faço são minhas.

A OKA é uma organização sem fins lucrativos que busca melhorar a cobertura de conteúdo de países não anglófonos, que normalmente são sub-representados na Wikipédia. Os tradutores são livres para trabalhar em qualquer artigo que desejarem, sem obrigações para com a OKA. Mais informações sobre a OKA podem ser encontradas [https://oka.wiki aqui].

{{Wikipedia:Userbox/Wikitradutor|en|Inglês}}

• ES:

{{cuenta remunerada|empleador=OKA.wiki}}

Recibo un modesto estipendio de Open Knowledge Association (OKA) para apoyar mi trabajo en Wikipedia. Sin embargo, las contribuciones son mías.

OKA es una organización sin fines de lucro que busca mejorar el alcance de contenido proveniente de países no anglófonos, el cual suele estar poco representado en Wikipedia. Los traductores son libres de trabajar en cualquier artículo que deseen, sin obligaciones hacia OKA. Más información sobre OKA [https://oka.wiki aquí].

ES-wiki: Become an autoconfirmed user (usuario autoconfirmado):

To edit the ES wikipedia fully you need to become an autoconfirmed user (usuario autoconfirmado) by meeting the following requirements:

1. The account is at least 4 days old.
2. You have made at least 50 edits on Spanish Wikipedia articles.

One easy way to reach the edit count is to go to other Wikipedia articles and add links within paragraphs. You can also add categories at the bottom of the page.

Article selection and setup

1. Check for duplicates and similar articles. Other wikis are not as well maintained as EN-wiki, so there is a much higher likelihood that the article listed in the tracker already exists. Therefore, you should be even more diligent when checking if the article already exists before starting to translate. More on how to deal with duplicate articles here.
2. It’s assumed that you have read and understood the OKA Instructions (into EN). The basic process of setting the article and saving your progress as a Draft is still the same. The difference is that we will no longer submit the Draft for revision. We will publish it in the Mainspace directly.
3. Start time recording and use the correct translation project. For example: "EN to ES" (which isn't the same as "ES to EN")

Main content

Check other sources before translating technical terms.

If the article uses technical terms (e.g., Machine Learning), there is a high chance that an official translation of that term already exists.

You should always check for what is the common use of a technical term before doing a literal translation. An easy way to do it is finding the term’s EN-wiki page and checking the translation given in your source language (if it has an equivalent).

Consider adding the original English term in parenthesis.

If you suspect that the translated term is not yet commonly used in the other language (e.g., because it is a new concept or because people often use the English term), then you should also add the English untranslated term in parenthesis.

For example, in French, Machine Learning is called Apprentissage Automatique, but many French speakers will know it under its English name. Therefore, the FR Wikipedia page shows both the French and the English names in the lead section.

You should not add the original English term in the following situations:

• If it was already used previously on the page
• If you have added a link to a dedicated Wikipedia page for that term (e.g., the French page Apprentissage supervisé refers to Apprentissage Automatique without mentioning the English translation again, since this English translation is present in the link)

Finalizing

Short description:

• PT:

Not required as it is generated automatically once the article is published

• ES:

Not required although you can add one by going to the article’s Wikidata page and editing the description.

ES-wiki: (Optional) Wikidata or “Control de autoridades” template.

Add it by copying and pasting the template from another ES-wiki article.

You can also add it by pasting the following code to the bottom of your page:

{{Control de autoridades}}

Publishing

Step one: To satisfy Wikipedia's copyright and translation requirements, you have to fill in the Edit summary box as follows (only when adding new translated text, not for subsequent small edits):

• PT:

O conteúdo desta edição foi traduzido do artigo existente da Wikipédia em inglês em [[:en:NOME EXATO DO ARTIGO ORIGINAL]]; veja o histórico para a atribuição.

• ES:

El contenido de esta edición está traducido del artículo de Wikipedia en inglés que se encuentra en [[:en: NOMBRE EXACTO DEL ARTÍCULO EN INGLÉS]]; ver el historial para verificar su atribución.

Step two: Add the following translation tags to the “Talk” page ( PT: “Discussão” ; ES: “Discussion”) of your article to indicate that you translated the article from a different Wikipedia:

• PT:

{{Tradução de|tipo= |idioma= |página= |data= }}{{OKA}}

• ES:

{{Traducido de|en|NOMBRE EXACTO DEL ARTÍCULO EN INGLÉS|original|fecha=|oldid=|trad=}}{{OKA}}

Examples:

• PT:

{{Tradução de|artigo|en|AI Safety|{{Dtlink|2|6|2023}}}}{{OKA}}

• ES:

{{Traducido de|en|AI Safety|original|fecha=|oldid=|trad=}}{{OKA}}

Step three: Do not add red links to the articles tracker, except if:

• You are personally interested in translating them; or
• They are part of a “Main article”, “Further information”, or similar tag (see example screenshot below). These tags should not point to red links, so it makes sense to translate them to improve navigation and completeness of a topic.

Our selection has to be more careful than for English, focusing on the most important articles - which are often not those marked as red links.

Important:
If you add a red link to the non-English article tracker, be sure to tag and/or notify a Team Manager before starting the translation, so they can assess it, add relevant notes, and prioritize it. If you don't notify a manager, the page will be deleted from the tracker.

Tips and best practices

ES-wiki

Title conventions

As with the EN-wiki, when deciding on a title for your ES-wiki article, you should try to use the same style as other ES-wiki pages, which you can find by doing a quick Internet search for similar articles.

Another thing to watch out for is the use of "La/El/etc." in front of nouns.

For example, if the article is called "Gulf War", the correct title would be "Guerra del Golfo", not "La Guerra del Golfo" or "Guerra Golfo". This rule also applies to section titles.

You can read more about article title conventions on the ES-wiki here, and about section titles here.

"Plantillas de navegación"

It often happens that you find articles in EN-wiki with useful navigation templates that you would like to recreate in ES-wiki.

However, due to ES-wiki's current policy, it is not recommended to create such templates. There is a high risk that these templates will be deleted by an admin as soon as you create them, causing you to lose all the effort and hours you put into the task.

If you still want to add the useful links to your article, you can add a new section and create a list of the relevant links. You can also use the "Lista de columnas" template to improve navigability.

Duplicate articles

For various reasons, ES-wiki has many old articles that are not properly maintained. This often results in incorrectly linked articles and duplicate content (or, content that already exists in ES-wiki).

The correct procedure for translating articles with duplicate content to ES-wiki is to expand the existing article, not to create a new, separate one. For example, both Photography (the art, application, and practice of creating images by recording light) and Photograph (an image created by light falling on a photosensitive surface) lead to the ES-wiki page Fotografía, which displays content from both even though they're separate pages in EN-wiki.

Pre-translation research is essential to ensure that you don't add duplicate topics or pages to ES-wiki, and that you don't delete wikidata links to other relevant existing articles - which could result in your user profile being banned or flagged for "sabotaje" or "vandalismo".

If you are unsure whether an article with duplicate content should be translated, created or expanded, flag it in the tracker and/or let a manager know so they can assess the situation.

How to translate "Lists"

Wikipedia has thousands of lists of things; some are even lists of other lists, many of them with thousands of views and covering relevant topics worth translating. The basic guidelines to list translation into Spanish are as follow:

• Replace "List" with "Anexo:" in your title, otherwise your article may be challenged or even deleted. An example of how this works is the page List of Wikipedias, translated into ES-wiki as Anexo:Wikipedias.
  • Replace the word "list" throughout the article whenever appropriate (e.g., in the introduction of the list). Here's an example:

• Check the list's items for availability. If a list has too many "red links" in the target language, it's not worth translating and must be deprioritized.
• Organize the items in alphabetical order after translation, otherwise the list will lose its comprehensiveness.

You can find more information on ES-wiki Anexos here.