Last modified: 2009-03-30 17:17:44 UTC
Context ------- Let's say I maintain my own bird website. I give info about birds and for each bird I also add an hyperlink to the appropriate Wikipedia page (on my "Eagle" page, I link to "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle"). Now, people from around the world propose translations for my website; every translator must find a replacement for each and every Wikipedia link. Proposition ----------- A simple enhancement: a GET "API" for automatic "translation" of Wiki pages. By that I simply mean a link to a wiki page but with a language preference. Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle?pref=fr This link would bring me to the french version of Eagle (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aigle_%28oiseau%29). If no french page match the "Eagle" english page, the link would give me the english page as a fallback. Why? ---- This would help a lot for translating web pages; advantages I see: * Simplification for translators: no need to look for a translation for every link; * Automatic update of links: if the french page for "Eagle" changes URI, no need to change anything on my website; I must only keep an eye on the original (english) language. * Pre-translation: if no translation exists yet in a given language, a link can be written now, knowing the translated page will appear one day. Why can't I just write a wrapper? --------------------------------- I could write a wrapper on my side, fetching the english page, parsing the DOM, looking for links in the "in other languages" box and give my visitors the right page, but I feel it wastes wikipedia's resources and adds a big overhead for something that (I think!) could be easily added in wikimedia's codebase.
I have changed the summary from "Simple API for automatic language translation". The old summary was misleading as it was still humans doing the actual translating!
there is an easier way to do this. see <a href="http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5353">bug 5353</a> if there's a link in "other languages" to the other wiki, we already know that the page exists AND the name of it. All we need to do is place the link, that we already have and know leads to an existing page, inside a fixed URL string.
I don't get what you mean Kevin. From what I understand you suggest using Google Translate; peeking at the Tom DeLay example on bug 5353 hurts my eyes - you wouldn't rely on facts from a machine-translated encylopedia, wouldn't you? What I meant is a tool that will bring a _native_ version when available. For a polish version of the english 'tree' article, return the 'drzewo' article on the polish wikipedia; if there's no polish version of the article, return the english one.
No activity in over two years, closing as WONTFIX. Please REOPEN if you've got a valid reason.
RFE is still valid.
It's just a query on langlinks where ll_from = current page and ll_lang = the pref However, i'd favour a different name than pref for the parameter. What about useiw ?
I guess this is an API request. AFAICT, the bot-interface keyword isn't used any longer (this being the only open bug using it).
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 14024 ***
