Feed The Beast Wiki:Translation guide

As it happens, there isn't much of a guide, or rules at all, for translators. This page is suppose to help that.

Before translating anything
Please consider translating the "core" articles/templates before translating anything else. Many, maybe even most, articles depend on these.

Here is a sort of list:
 * Template:Cg/Crafting Table
 * Template:Cg/Furnace
 * Module:Infobox/strings
 * Module:Infobox/thing
 * Template:Infobox
 * Template:Infobox mod

FTB Wiki is also recommended, but it may be a lot of work for anyone new.

Translating pages
Done with the core pages! Great! Now on to more interesting pages, like Chute.

If you've noticed, most pages aren't translatable. Each page needs special markup for it to be translatable. Do NOT try to translate a page that isn't translatable, and do NOT try to add the markup yourself. Please ask User:Xbony2 if you want a particular article to be translatable.

Instead of clicking the "Random Page" button until you find an article that has a "Translate this page" button on the top, you should go to the Feed The Beast Wiki:Translation portal. You can find a list of languages there. These are NOT all of the languages that the wiki can be translated to (not even by a long shot). If you want to translate to another language, then ask User:Xbony2 or the FTB Wiki IRC.

If you click one of the languages, for example, German, you'll find a rather large list of translatable articles, templates, modules, etc. It's possible that some articles are already translated, it's also possible that most are already translated, but it is very, very unlikely that all of the articles are translated. Some of the things that are translatable are in groups, like IC2 Nuclear Control or the Help Pages. Clicking "expand" will open up all of the things in it.

In our translation system, things are separated into "Units" or "Chunks". This means you will translate parts of an article, rather then an entire article. This also means if the original article is changed, you don't need to retranslate every single thing, just the specific Unit. Most articles only have 2-15 Units you need to translate, but stuff like Getting Started guides and changelogs can have hundreds.

Make sure to translate everything. If the English unit means the same thing in your language, just copy it over.

Links
Links in translatable articles look (or at least, should look) like this: " ".

To translate the link, only translate the second parameter. For example, " " would become "  " if translated to Spanish. Translating it to " " WILL break the link, so don't do that.

Interwiki links
You may notice links to Wikipedia are not formatting like a normal link. It might look like this: " United States ".

Making it link to, for this example, the corresponding Spanish Wikipedia article, is fairly easy. The English Wikipedia includes interwikis to almost all other wikipedias. So, " United States " can be converted to " Estados Unidos ". Or, for a German example, " United States " can be converted to " Vereinigte Staaten ".

The syntax is fairly simple: in "  ", "  " represents your language code (like "nl" for Dutch or "de" for German). "  " represents the name of the page in the other Wikipedia. "  " is the display name of the link.

Names
Names of blocks, items and mods are usually translated. Translations of these names should be based off of any official translations of the mods. If no official translations exist, it is recommended to submit a translation or use an unofficial translation. If using an unofficial/self-created translation, an English translation of the block/item/mod should be provided (example below, in Spanish).

El Gato (Ingles: Cat) es...

It may be a good habit to do this anyway, even if you are using an official translation.

List of possibly useful unofficial mod translations
(Feel free to add on to this list if you know of anything)

Restoring translations
In some (or rather, may) articles you may notice this in the translation interface:

As the quote says, the FTB Wiki used a different kind of translation system in the past. The previous system had some issues, one being that translators didn't get any credit, and everything was done externally. Nevertheless, we moved to a new system: the present system.

Many translations were made with the older system. When we moved to the new system, those older translation did not line up the with new system. Most of them need to be restored.

Xbony2 has made backups of older translated pages. Compared to the current versions of the pages, old translations likely lack information and other features. You can use it for reference, though, but be very careful before copy-pasting anything to check through it.

Languages translated with the old system
=Qualifications= This is a wiki: there are no real qualifications for translators. However, if your translations are bad, they may not be approved.

Please DO NOT translate to a language you do not know. If you must constantly use tools such as Google Translate, chances are you may not be good enough. It's ok to use such utilities if you forget a word or two, but having to translate things like entire sentences to your language is a bad indicator.

If the language you're translating to is your native language, chances are that you are more then qualified. If you can read and understand an article in your language's Wikipedia, then you are probably qualified.

Do NOT feel pressured to avoid translating if you aren't sure if your grasp of a language is strong enough. Translations don't need to be perfect in every way; besides, it's not like they can't be improved later.

English Qualifications
Since this is an English wiki, and you can only translate from English to another language, it is expected that translators know at least a basic understanding of English.

If an article has been translated to a language you know a bit better then English, it's ok to peek at that other translation if it helps you out. Just don't base your new translation entirely off the other translation.

Don't worry too much if your English isn't sharp as a knife; you can ask our IRC channel for a Staff member for guidance if something doesn't make sense to you, or if you need help understanding a big word.