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.

Editors are expected to take a scholarly and rational approach in their conduct and criticisms, adhering to stringent rules concerning the content of 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:

About

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 there should be some slight alterations made, they must first be discussed with others on the talk page.

After choosing an article for translation:

Create an account. 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).
Remember to save your progress regularly to avoid any unforeseeable errors or in case you are interrupted (see some tips for saving work).
After you are done, you can preview or save the page.

An additional step that might help some translators is to turn on WikEd, which is a full-featured MediaWiki-integrated text editor. WikEd adds enhanced text processing functions, such as highlighting the WikiIslam syntax, so editors are able to focus more easily on the text itself. To turn this feature on, got to "Preferences", click on the "Gadgets" tab, then check mark "WikEd".

If these steps are difficult to follow, a message can be left on the forum page with the name of the English article and its new translated title. An administrator will then create a page using the new title and fill it with the existing English text so that it is ready to be translated.

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.