Last modified: 2007-05-05 16:22:07 UTC
/This is somewhat long text, please be patient.../ Request for the Belarusian (normative) language (also referred to as academic, modern, official, the language taught at schools, *state language* of the Republic of Belarus, etc.etc.) now seems to match all the criteria to get a wikipedia opened. It has gathered seemingly healthy 3/4 of the votes in Meta (the request was recently transferred to the "Approved requests" section), has the significant number of articles and growth rate (2500+, possibly 2700, articles in ~3 months), and there are at least 8 active contributors. Currently, the WP functioning at [[http://be.wikipedia.org]] is staunchly controlled by the admins coming from the interest group, promoting the use of the alternative version of the Belarusian language (orthography, grammar, lexicon; self-naming "classical"), posing it as the only "really existing and supported" version of the Belarusian language, pretending to represent all Belarusian language speakers with this version -- see the discussion and the references. The normative version is nominally supported there, but rather as a "live shield" for the alternative version of the language (interface and texts of rules and categories all done in alternative, permanent "flashmobbing" of dissenters) -- see the discussion and the references. The working "through the orthography convertor" is a red herring thing, as there is quite more to the differences in the versions of the language, than "just the difference", and there is no such *known-working* product with workable database. If the clarifications or explanations would be needed, please contact us. The [[:m:Special projects subcommittees/Languages]] is informed about the problem, has supposedly submitted the request to the Board. However, some management and communication problems sem to exist, so possibly the coordination with them would be advisable. The members of the team of the Belarusian (normative) language Wikipedia have no wish to evict or close anybody's else Wikipedia. We would be quite happy with the domain "bel.wikipedia.org" (iso-639-2,3). We consider this stretching of the rules as non-harming and consensus-making as possible. Thank you. Contact persons are User:Yury Tarasievich on incubator.wikimedia.org User:Anton Kazmyarchuk on incubator.wikimedia.org
Created attachment 3394 [details] php for the initial batch of the translation of Messages
Created attachment 3398 [details] Namespaces' names in PHP array
I would create the new MessagesBe.php from above files, but before doing the work I have some questions: 1. What shall we do with the existing MessagesBe.php? Rename it to MessagesBe-x-old.php and add it to Names.php? 2. What is the local language name? Still 'Беларуская' like now in Names.php?
Name is "Беларуская", just like this, yes. Question #1 is not for me to advice.
It seems that the Messages.php insertion isn't needed, as the team started changing the Messages text through the wiki interface. The issue of the namespaces' names switching remains, though. Is it considered an error to have a similar translations for all of the Talk namespaces' names? In case this is so, I'm attaching the variant of the Namespaces translation with different names for all the "Talks".
Created attachment 3403 [details] Namespaces with unique Talks names
(In reply to comment #5) > It seems that the Messages.php insertion isn't needed, as the team started > changing the Messages text through the wiki interface. The localization via wiki interface is nice for bewiki, but we need the message file for other projects too. Think to people who want to use Wikimedia Commons or other WMF projects in your language. While the message file is available to MediaWiki, it's available to all users of MediaWiki whole over the world.
You're absolutely right, just that the Messages attached here got obsoleted by the in-wiki work. We'll certainly produce the Messages for all over the world etc., as long as we'll understand the procedure.
(In reply to comment #8) > You're absolutely right, just that the Messages attached here got obsoleted by > the in-wiki work. We'll certainly produce the Messages for all over the world > etc., as long as we'll understand the procedure. Please be carefully, not every in-wiki translation with subject to Wikipedia can be used for an international language file. A guideline can be found at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_localisation
Please rest assured we'll be careful and will adhere to the technical specs. Two of people involved in translation have experience in L10N (OpenOffice and KDE for the respective language). It's just the unfamiliar MediaWiki L10N production cycle which seems to give us bit of trouble. What of the Namespaces and NamespacesUnique... ?
Coukld I remind you of the names of the namespaces issue. There are two PHP files attached, one with all Talk namespaces bar one having same name, and one with unique names for those. Please do tell, if there's something more needed to switch namespaces names'.
(In reply to comment #11) > There are two PHP files attached, one with all Talk namespaces bar > one having same name, and one with unique names for those. I have marked the first namespace file as obsolete. Same names for different talk namespaces are not possible. I have modified the other file (NS_WIKIPEDIA --> NS_PROJECT...) and will apply shortly. > Please do tell, if there's something more needed to switch > namespaces names'. The switch of the project name has to be done by a server admin. This bug is marked with the keyword "shell" already.
Namespaces and reworked message file applied with r20951. I think it will go live during this week. Please provide for the upcoming updates unified diffs against trunk as described in the guideline.
To be consistent I have duplicated LanguageBe_x_old.php to LanguageBe.php (r21224). If necessary please provide a patch to correct possible errors in this. Thank you.
Closing bug as the site is available.
