Help:Language translation

Portal Wiki is capable of handling multilingual content and providing the reader a user interface in their preferred language. Multilingual editors are encouraged to translate and maintain articles in as many different languages as possible to reach the whole Portal global community. Maintaining up to date translated articles is very important and it should be noted that it is preferential to have an up to date English article, rather than an out of date translated one.

How to translate a page
Follow these guidelines to start translating an article.


 * 1) Check that your language is supported (see List of supported languages below). We support all languages that have official in-game translations.
 * 2) Go to the English version of the article's page and click "Edit this page". Select everything in the box and copy it. Now go to your new article title and paste it in.
 * The French version of the article "Hats" would be Hats/fr, not Chapeaux, Hats/Chapeaux or Chapeaux/fr
 * 1) Add the template Trans to the top of the page. This keeps all incompleted articles in your language together.
 * You do not need to add (for example), only trans or translate is required.
 * 1) Use  to show a translated title.
 * For example: would show the title "Flammenwerfer" while keeping the real article title as "Flamethrower/de".
 * The display title can also be set by the infobox (see below).
 * 1) Change the categories at the bottom of the page.
 * For example: becomes . Do this for all categories at the bottom of the page.
 * 1) You can now translate the rest of the article. Note that some text is stored in other pages (called "templates"). To translate these you will have to edit them individually.

Translation community
Each language has its own main discussion page at Portal:Translation progress. You can also find statistics about your language's translation effort here.

Please also join the Portal Wiki Translators Steam Group and watch the translators' noticeboard (click the 'watch' tab at the top). This will ensure you stay on top of any changes or announcements.

Multilingual guidelines

 * English is the main reference language, and all root pages should be named and written in English.
 * Other languages should be placed in an appropriately named sub-page of the English version.
 * Language subpages should use the appropriate ISO 639 code (as listed below)
 * If an international version of a page exists but an English version does not, then please create a stub article for the English version as this aids navigation.
 * The use of Languages at the bottom of articles is now discouraged, as language links appear in the sidebar.
 * While in the process of translating articles, using is encouraged to display to other editors that the article is a work in progress.
 * Please do not sign articles using the 4 tildes ("&#126;&#126;&#126;&#126;"). The list of people who contributed to the article is always available in the history (click the tab at the top of the page), so it is not necessary to sign.

Automated translation tools

 * please report any pages that consist of entirely machine-translated text (or any users that appear to repeatedly use these tools) to the translators' noticeboard.

On-wiki communication

 * Talk pages
 * It is vital that all discussion based on specific users and articles is in English. This is especially important when discussing the quality or accuracy of any article or translator.
 * Edit summaries
 * All edit summaries should be written in English where practical.

These requirements allow staff and fellow editors to keep up to date with every aspect of translation.

Articles

 * Displaying a different title
 * Displaying a title in a different language is possible with the use of the magic word &#123;&#123;DISPLAYTITLE:&#125;&#125;.
 * For example, using &#123;&#123;DISPLAYTITLE:Example&#125;&#125; will display the article name as Example.


 * Infoboxes
 * To display a new name in an infobox, add a new line like this:
 * The infobox template for weapons and hats needs a few lines to stay in English for it to work properly. If a line is listed below, please do not translate it:
 * See Template:Item infobox for further help.
 * The infobox template for weapons and hats needs a few lines to stay in English for it to work properly. If a line is listed below, please do not translate it:
 * See Template:Item infobox for further help.
 * See Template:Item infobox for further help.
 * See Template:Item infobox for further help.
 * See Template:Item infobox for further help.
 * See Template:Item infobox for further help.
 * See Template:Item infobox for further help.
 * See Template:Item infobox for further help.


 * Links
 * You can link to translated articles and display different text for the links like this:
 * Armes will create Armes.
 * If using external links that are in English, you should also use the template lang icon directly after the link to indicate the language of the external link.
 * Google on Soldier/fr should look like, which will generate:
 * Google
 * Main and See also – When using these templates you can display a different title using the parameter l1 (lowercase L1):
 * generates
 * Main article: Chapeaux
 * generates
 * Main articles: Chapeaux and Objets divers
 * Note: To change the "Main article:" text, see the individual template pages for main and see also as they use translation switching.


 * Categories
 * Language pages should be kept in separate categories.
 * For example on Wrench/fr, if you find at the bottom of the page, change it to.


 * Redirects
 * You can create as many language redirects as are needed, as long as they are tagged properly with R lang. See example:
 * Дробовик redirecting to Shotgun/ru will have the following text on the page 'Дробовик':
 * : always remember to add (this helps to find these redirects later, as there can be hundreds of them)
 * : always remember to add (this helps to find these redirects later, as there can be hundreds of them)


 * Disambiguation pages
 * Disambiguation pages (i.e. pages that list articles with similar names for convenience) that are specific to one language should not be created. Root pages should always be in English, and much of the wiki page structure relies on this. Lang-specific disambig pages can become too difficult to keep track of.

Templates
The majority of templates should use translation switching, with the exception of some navigational boxes. Previously it was necessary to create a localized version of a template, e.g. Template:Hat infobox/ru. Now localized text is stored in one template, where text for all languages is stored. Please see Help:Translation switching for further information.

List of supported languages
Portal Wiki supports language translation of articles into 21 languages, the majority of which have localization files for Portal. The languages highlighted in the table below are exceptions to the rule. Czech and Brazilian Portuguese are being actively translated on STS and may have localization files appear in the game soon, and support for Arabic has been extended due to the amount of existing Arabic content.


 * there are no plans to add support for any further languages at this time. Support for the translation of articles into a specific language will now only be considered if there are localization files present in the game. The reasoning for this is that the workload for translators who do not have support from the Steam Translation Server (in the form of word lists, nouns, etc, and proper discussion channels) is significantly higher. The amount of active translators is also less, meaning pages can quickly become out of date.


 * Please do not make requests to moderators or on the talk page regarding requests, our stance at this time is not changing.