Wikipedia:WikiProject Writing/Translation task force
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Welcome |
The goal of the Translation Taskforce is to improve knowledge equity across rhetoric and composition articles within writing studies across language Wikipedias. We identified topics and authors that can be added or expanded upon in English, Arabic, German, and Russian Wikipedia. All bilingual and multilingual composition and rhetoric scholars and other Wikipedia editors can collaborate on our project and help contribute to the Wiki world. Some resources that these individuals can refer to are the Wikiproject Writing resources page, policies and guidelines page, beginner's guide to Wikipedia page, and how to create a page.
Getting Started |
To begin translating use the Wikipedia:Content Translation Tool. Watch this video for a step-by-step instructions.
Remember that different Wikipedias have specific language cultures. So before you start, make sure you learn the community guidelines for any language you start editing in. This page has tips and guidelines for Arabic, German, and Russian.
Below is a list of articles in need of translation, but you can also find articles that need translating by going to a page you are interested in and checking to see if the desired language is linked under the "Languages" section found in the left-hand column.
If you are a scholar, an editor or someone who adores languages, translations, rhetoric and composition, you will discover a lot of interesting things about Wikipedia. You can contribute even if you have very limited experience with Wikipedia by learning from our mentors and project participants. You can attend monthly Wikipedia online streaming twitches where you can learn how to create articles, make edits, move your article to the mainspace, or contribute to existing articles.
How to find the language you are looking for
Please scroll the page down and on the left side bar of the page you will see the list of languages (this is the last section on the left of the page). You can find the languages there, however, if the article has not been translated into the language you are looking for, you can create this page.
How to find an article you would like to translate
In order to find articles not present in another language please use this tool
Also, please look at the list of articles which need some improvement
Wikipedia rules and norms
Keep in mind that Wikipedia rules and norms may vary depending on the language you are working with. Before you start the translation, check the rules for a particular language that you use. You can check some instructions for Arabic, German, and Russian Wikipedia below.
Integration guide |
Moving your translated article to the mainspace
- Before moving your article to the mainspace, reread everything you have written, check the structure and the general flow of the article.
- Before moving your article to the mainspace, make sure references match the citations.
- Check the spelling and punctuation to make sure everything is correct.
- Do not move the whole translation at once, rather move it in short paragraphs. If you move the whole article, it is likely going to be deleted for a machinery translation, even if it was a manual one.
- Open your sandbox in one window and the mainspace for the article in another one: it will give you a chance to look at both windows at the same time and not to get lost while moving the article.
- When your article is in the mainspace, it is going to be checked, and it might take some time before you get notifications that your article needs correcting.
Fixing hyperlinks, templates, and infoboxes
- Interlanguage Links provides information about adding links in the left hand column that lists the other languages the article has been translated to.
Language-specific advice
Arabic
While translating a Wikipedia article from English to Arabic, be mindful of the following:
- Arabic Wikipedia does not have an automatically generated template similar to English Wikipedia.
- The article should be aligned right since Arabic, like Hebrew, reads from right to left.
- If used properly, machine translation can be helpful. However, being mindful of sentence structure and other grammatical mechanics remains important.
- Be mindful of cultural contexts–not all expressions can be correctly translated.
- Keep in mind that literal translation from any language to another is not an acceptable translation.
- While translating names of notable figures from Arabic to English, be mindful of how their names are pronounced in their mother tongue. For Example, Saeed El Haggag’s name in standard Arabic is written “Hajjaj”. However, the author is Egyptian, and his name is, therefore, pronounced Haggag and should be written as such in English.
- Editors can use Content Translation only if they are more experienced editors. If you are just starting out on Wikipedia, you can translate manually by creating new articles using your Wikipedia Sandbox.
- Always save your work elsewhere (Google Docs or on your desktop). Drafting your work in the sandbox without any backup can cause you to lose your work if after moving your article to Wikipedia it gets deleted for whatever reason.
German
Here are some helpful hints and resources for German translations:
- As you get started, watch this video to set up the translation tool.
- Translation tools can be helpful, but keep an eye out for unclear sentence structure.
- Keep terms in English that don't have a direct translation or add "englisch" followed by the English word in parenthesis. For example: Asiatische Amerikaner (englisch Asian Americans).
- If you are translating an article from German to English, check out article to help transfer sources.
- When you are importanting information from English into German, use overview as a checklist to make the process quicker.
- German Wikipedia uses a Trust Network as a means of creating more peer reviewed and reliable information.
Russian
While translating articles from English to Russian, pay attention to the following:
- Create sandbox in Russian wikipedia.
- You can use the translation tool to move your article to the main space directly.
- While using the translation tool, you can choose google translation, although in that case you have to edit the translation. It would be better for novice editors to use manual translation in order to avoid article's removal from the main space.
- Pay a lot of attention to the terms, especially those which cannot be directly translated into Russian.
- Use Russian equivalents for those words that do not exist in Russian context.
About |
The Translation Task Force was created in Fall 2021 to identify articles related to rhetoric and composition in English, Arabic, German, and Russian Wikipedias that need to be created or further expanded upon. The task force is currently made up of the 2021-2022 Wikipedia Graduate Fellows: Andrew Yim(User:Ayim93), Alexandra Krasova(User:Sashaalexa), Abir Ward(User:AbirWard), and Katie Bramlett (User:Katlett).
