Hi,
Sometimes you do it by splitting the paragraph several lines like here, and sometimes you add <translate> tags in the middle of the paragraph like here.
Is there a suggestion documented anywhere to split paragraphs into smaller translation units? Or is it just something that you do yourself?
I thought I wrote it down somewhere, but I couldn't find it.
Topic:Xnd7su3ew0fba4py#flow-post-xpd5yauhp5kj864w
> By making translation units as small and simple as possible, translations become easier and are less likely to be left untranslated.
Have you measured it? Are pages where you did this split actually more likely to have more translations?
> Moreover, simplifying variable names increases the likelihood of hitting the translation memory, thereby making the translation process more efficient.
It's not significant. Sentences within paragraphs of body text are not likely to be in translation memory anyway.
Making translation units shorter is generally a good idea, but the way in which you do it is not great. It adds a lot of markup, which makes the page hard to edit.
It's better to make the paragraphs shorter and rely on the Translate extension's capability to mark each paragraph for translation.
That's OK, but is it worth adding so much markup to achieve that? Just making sure that paragraphs are no longer than four sentences achieves a much better balance of translation ease and markup heaviness than splitting everything to single sentences. Besides, keeping paragraphs shorter is a good thing in general for readability in the source language.
Yes. Markup is only signal to parser. Every text unit is numbered. Experience editors have not problem with orientation in wikicode of this type. You must first understand as functioned this concept of translations. Text unit is really a wiki page from Translation namespace. Every change has own id. If a change only one char, TU waiting to new revision of the volunteer translator. And more senteces in one TU complicate it.
Experience editors have not problem with orientation in wikicode of this type - actually, they do. I do, and lots of other people do. It's way too much code, and it makes editing the source page harder.
And more senteces in one TU complicate it. - paragraphs of five senteces is not too much. More than that is, and when I prepare pages for translation, I try to reduce paragraphs to five sentences or fewer. But splitting a paragraph to single sentences doesn't help much.
I am sorry, but page Extension:DynamicPageList_(disambiguation) isn't simple page, because combine very complexity wikicode:
I have multilanguage wiki and use it very much – see my Main Page, which is generated by it. For it I know specifics of the wiki code markup of it for using by multilanguage page very good. I don't use any lua modules for it.
I have question. You use for editation pages visual editor, or do edit plain wikicode? You call as editor for simple code, but translator wants simple TU. Text which uses more sentences want a lot more knowledge of the translator than you think. The consequence is that translators are few and far between, because translation a large chunks of text with a minor changes, not easy. They do not have time to update such pages and often remain untranslated a long time for it.
I am sorry, but page Extension:DynamicPageList_(disambiguation) isn't simple page, because combine very complexity wikicode - I'd argue that it's not so important to translate this page in the first place. I only used as an example because it was easy to find it. People who install extensions are more likely to know English. Some of them don't know English, so it's still useful to translate them, but it's less important than the Visual Editor user guide, for example.
For editing pages, I use the visual editor when I can and I wikitext when visual editor wouldn't work well. It's obvious that translators want simple translation units; what I say is that a translation unit with five sentences is usually simple enough.
I reworked page Extension:DynamicPageList (disambiguation). By my mind structure of the outline paragraphs was not good solution.
No, you are wrong. Read m:Translatability page, please. But use translate markup as you see fit. For me, translating and preparing pages for translation on MediaWiki.org is a peripheral matter, for which no one pays me and which I do when I have the mood and the time, that be not create duplicity manuals on my wikis.
it's still useful to translate them, but it's less important than the Visual Editor user guide, for example. – Visual Editor user guide is important only for wiki where is use. My wiki's not use it. By my experience, users what use Visual Editor (default on Wikimedia wikis'), don't know a basic wiki markup and has problem with template using. My wikis have not a lot users, and I have not time to revision code of another user. I disable VE and users now better understanding code.
Visual Editor user guide is important only for wiki where is use. My wiki's not use it. - I'm not sure to which wiki do you refer when you say that your wiki doesn't use Visual Editor. If you are talking about the Czech Wikipedia, then it definitely does use the Visual Editor: since January 2023, the level of Visual Editor usage in cs.wikipedia.org is above 20% most of the time. On mediawiki.org and meta, it's only about 1%, but that's understandable because they are very technical.
As for the page m:Translatability, it says: "Don't put too much text within one translation unit. Create more translation units instead." I generally agree with this, but the way it's written now is too vague and ambiguous: it doesn't say how should more translation units be created. I started a discussion about it on its talk page.
cs:Wikipedia isn't multilanguage wiki. MediaWiki.org support as source language only english. Combination more language source pages is more complicated. For it I create more specially templates, unfortunatelly unused to here, because here it's solved by Lua, not by wiki code and PHP extensions as be do it common.
However, I have the advantage that I am not only a sysop, but also a host administrator.
I meant wikis https://www.thewoodcraft.org and https://wiki.control.fel.cvut.cz
When I do marking, I follow my intuition. Some languages say in one sentence what others say in two. TU must be logical and created in such a way that the translator is not in doubt. I remarked your change on m:Translatability, marked for translation and translated into my language. It's logical and to the point. But I split TU No. 3 and created two new ones. Why?
Don't you think enabling a syntax highlighter would improve understanding of wiki markup? It's indispensable for me when editing complex sources with translation tags. I don't like the visual editor and prefer to edit the source directly.
@Shirayuki, if you're asking me, then no, syntax highlighter doesn't really help. Splitting a single paragraph into many translation units makes it look too much like code. It shouldn't be like that. It's not code, it's text.
