WikiIslam:Translations

WikiIslam is an international website with editors, contributors and visitors from all over the world. Its policies and guidelines reflect this by requiring material to be tailored to accommodate, as best as possible, a universal audience. One of the major issues faced by sites that appeal to a universal audience is the language barrier. The WikiIslam Translation Project aims to rectify this by providing translations of its content in all languages.

Shortcut: WITR

Sub-Domains

A main page's worth of translations (about 25-35 articles) is the amount of material required before considering to launch a new sub-domain in any language. Although WikiIslam's core principles will remain, once these initial translations are completed, the new sub-domains are free to evolve separately to the English site.

One of the key rules to follow when translating these pre-sub-domain articles is that they should always remain absolutely faithful to the original English work, retaining their scholarly tone and information. The reason for accurate translations to begin with is that it allows new editors in that particular language to understand the style, tone, and quality that is expected in all languages.

It also allows existing administrators to see if there are any users (at least one regular and reliable editor) who would be suitable and willing to take on the responsibility of guiding the future direction of that sub-domain. To be an administrator at this site or one of its sub-domains, an editor must demonstrate that they fully understand and are willing to uphold the policies and guidelines concerning style, tone, and quality.

We take a scholarly and rational approach in our conduct and criticisms. We also differ from other sites in the fact that we have stringent rules concerning the content of our articles. Material should always be tailored to accommodate, as best as possible, a universal audience, and they should contain no politics, no promotion or criticism of other religions/worldviews and no opinions, only referenced facts.

Those who would like to see a WikiIslam sub-domain in their language are advised to join the WikiIslam Translation Project and start translating articles.

Articles to Translate

Here is an initial list of articles that can be translated. These are popular pages or otherwise good candidates for translation:

Women

Muhammad

Violence

Science

Others

Short articles

Alternatively, an article from the topics listed on the site map can be chosen. However, before beginning translation work on an article not listed here, editors are advised to leave a message on the forum page or their own talk page mentioning what they would like to translate. This allows administrators to make sure a project that is difficult to complete or is not optimal in some way is not started.

Articles to Avoid

Translations of most articles are welcome, but there are a few that should be avoided:

Articles that need further work or are awaiting a complete rewrite.

Core articles that contain quick summaries of issues with links to complete articles. These should only be translated if the linked articles have also been translated (without the linked articles, a Core article is redundant).

Help and Guidelines

Translations should always remain faithful to the original English work, retaining their scholarly tone and information. If for localization purposes an editor thinks their should be some slight alterations made, they must first be discussed with others on the talk page.

After you choose what article to translate:

Login or create account: The first step for you would be to create an account (this way, your IP address will not be recorded in page histories). If you already have an account, you can login. When you are logged in, you will see your username at the top left of every page with various user specific links like My talk, Preferences and so on.
Go to Help:Contents. Translate the title of your chosen article and type that into the "Create Page" box. If any of these characters exist in the title, avoid using them: brackets, commas, colons, semi-colons etc. These can be added into the title later by using {{page_title|Desired page title}}.
After clicking "Create page" you will see a blank page.
Open another window. Then go to your chosen article and click the 'Edit' button. You will now see the text and all the wiki-formatting of the target article.
Copy and paste the entire thing into the new page you created. In Windows, Select all text and then CTRL-C; CTRL-V to paste.
You can now start your translation. Delete the English text as you go. You can also keep another window open which has the original article in a regular view (non-editable).
After you are done, you can preview or save the page. To make sure you do not lose your work, see the "Saving your Work" section on the Help page. You can also simply 'copy' all the text. You can also do intermediate saves if you have to interrupt your work, or if it is a long page.
To find what you have been working on, click the 'My contributions' link at the top right.

Another way that might help some translators is to copy the text of the article into an external editor which highlights the WikiIslam syntax, so you are able to focus just on the text itself. This method can make translating more complex articles easier and speed up the translation in general. You can for example download Notepad++ and install the user defined language which highlights the WikiIslam syntax (this particular user defined language was created by a WikiIslam translator). After you finish editing in the external editor, simply paste the translation back to WikiIslam.

If these steps are difficult to follow, you can leave a message on the forum page with the name of the article you would like to translate and the new title of your translated version. An administrator will make a page for you with that new title with the existing English text that you can translate. Remember to save your work as you go (see the tips for saving your work).

Updates

July 14, 2013:

Preliminary work on a Russian sub-domain (http://ru.wikiislam.net/) has been completed and the site is now officially open to the public. Russian speakers who are interested in helping the Russian WikiIslam's continued growth can contact the Russian site administrator on their talk page.