The proficiency describes how well you can communicate in the language. It's indicated by a single character from the Proficiency column in the table below:
Proficiency
Meaning
0
You don't understand the language at all (or can understand it with considerable difficulty).
1
You can understand written material or simple questions.
2
You can edit simple texts or participate in basic discussions.
3
You can write in this language with some minor errors.
4
You can speak like a native speaker (though it's not your birth language).
5
You have professional proficiency; you understand the nuances of the language well enough to translate advanced documents.
N
You are a native speaker of the language and have a thorough grasp of it, including colloquialisms and idioms.
To remove the header and footer, use plain=1 as the first parameter, e.g. {{#babel:plain=1|sv-N|zh-3|de-1}}. This makes it easier to use with other userboxes.
For example, you can present them horizontally (each box taking a fixed width of 242px, including its tiny 1px margin) within another container box like:
But this requires inserting a custom CSS stylesheet to override the default clear:right (on pages with the LTR direction for the content language) and clear:left (on pages with a RTL direction for the content language) into clear:none. The stylesheet may also resize fonts, and the line-height for specific scripts used in the description, to improve the horizontal alignment of boxes and get a more flexible layout.
