A proposal for handling other languages in 2.0

This is a follow up on the discussion held in this thread as well as the Kickstarter project.

Basically, the idea I have is to have for each language one wiki, all using the same database software and identified with an element in the URL, e.g the English (normal) version might have https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/enwiki.php/, the German might have https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/dewiki.php/ and so on.

Implications:

• This would make the software migration from the current software to the "relational database" easier, since it means that all current pages would be moved to the new URLs and the old ones redirected.
• This would facilitate linking within a certain language version, seeing as in that system a Wiki Word link in a certain language version will link to the right page within that language. Of course, a way to link crosslanguage would be needed, e.g with language prefixes.
• This may also enforce a bit of a separation of text encoding, so that certain alphabets may be allowed only within that specific wiki.
• If so desired, one might set up language-specific moderators who have the lock, deletion and ban power within a given language.
• An easy function to translate elements into other languages is possible.

Issues:

• Things like edit elements, discussion pages for elements and history pages would be implemented by an action=thing suffix in the URL.
• One might want to have identical articles or elements in different languages share the same ID; this would need enforcement in the createlement and createarticle functions. But it would make connecting pages and elements in different languages much easier. Upon reconsideration, this probably won't work as it would cause interdependencies of the ID'ed elements that would be difficult to manage. We'd need at any rate a way to connects articles in different languages. And connect the "settings" elements.
• This split only works for the wiki; forums, private messages, that stuff and possibly Ask The Tropers and the like would still be shared.

edited 25th Dec '15 8:14:35 AM by SeptimusHeap

Sounds pretty good to me. It'll get rid of all the language prefixes in the articles, making the whole thing much more simpler and digest, and it'll allow for better handling of non-main pages.

Being able to switch between languages on a certain page without having to abuse redirects would also be great, both less confusing and less time-wasting. How would that work exactly though ? Would there be some language buttons on trope pages, and if you click on one which the page hasn't been translated in yet you get the option to create a translated page yourself ? Or is linking pages for a same trope in different languages not intended and I simply misunderstood part of this proposal ?

edited 26th Dec '15 11:12:59 AM by Yugnat

That is one tricky bit. We surely want to link say the French version of Big Bad to the English one (in the sidebar, maybe? Or buttons below the header, like in the old site?), that needs a way to connect these two together. ^{Technical details}  I did think originally of using the article ID (or example ID) but since these are randomly assigned by the createarticle/createexample function there'd have to be a way to force translated items to use one particular ID.

edited 28th Dec '15 5:33:35 AM by Lautael

Great idea, but do we know if it's possible ?

I think it should be possible, but that's really for the admins to answer. When I don't know; no earlier than next year for sure.

It IS possible, it's exactly the way The Other Wiki handles different wikiwords for different pages in different languages being the same encyclopedic concept.

Worth noting that drewski has been pointed to this thread. He has said that he views this all as technically possible but there is some more digging into the concept to do.

And for the sake of completeness, I'll note that ~Fighteer did have a different concept of handling translations (although they might be the same thing in terms of database structure).

My idea is that it would all be the same wiki, but you'd set a language preference in your profile (that can be overridden with a page control). All text elements (examples, descriptions, titles, captions) would have a localization structure allowing a version of that element to be stored for each language. If there's a localization of the element available in your chosen language, it would be displayed instead of the default (English) version.

Now, this creates some technical questions, such as whether we'd want the English version to be displayed if there's no translation available or if we'd want nothing at all shown. Neither choice is completely satisfying.

I will say that I don't like the idea of any form of segregation of the wiki by URL.

edited 31st Dec '15 9:30:06 AM by Fighteer

I'm... not a big fan of that. I like to be able to switch between the English and non-English wiki at will, without having to change my profile settings each time. Besides, wouldn't that mean that visitors would be restricted to the English version of the wiki only ?

That's why I suggested an on-page language control. You could bake it into the URL as well, as an argument... something like https://tvtropes.org/wiki/TropeName?lang=es.

edited 31st Dec '15 9:51:50 AM by Fighteer

Oh, okay, I kinda missed that part of the explaination, silly me... In that case yes, that would probably work as well.

Added some of the proposals in the OP to 2.0, save for the URL structure thing which is the main point of disagreement between me and Fighteer.

So I'm guessing that once 2.0 comes around, we'll need to copy every page that had already been translated through the "Translate" feature, and then delete the namespaced version of the page ?

I don't think so. The conversion script can be told to turn translated pages into elements in the other languages.

Speaking as neither a moderator not a multilingual troper (so take my remarks with a grain of salt), it seems to me that when a non-English page links to one that doesn't have a translation yet, it would be more preferable to redirect that link to the English page than to just have a blank page. This would convey that the page does exist in English, and provide an incentive for anyone following the link to translate it if they have the skill, much like how a Red Link to a work acts as an invitation to create the work page.

Perhaps it would be possible to have a banner that appears when such a link is followed, which would say something in the appropriate language along the lines of "[Page] does not yet exist in [language]. Please see the English version below. If you would like to translate this page, click here."

edited 25th Feb '16 11:21:13 AM by HeraldAlberich

A redirect would create a language mixture, so Imma say no to that.

The second thing can't be done either - how would the page know there is an English version thereof?

I thought that was the idea behind articles having the same back-end ID number and different language numbers. But maybe I misunderstood.

Until the article actually exists it has no ID associated at all. Nonexistent articles don't exist except for the URL you are using.

There is a problem with Fighteer's concept: The URL should reflect the name of the page in the language of the page contents. This is also true of trope names, not just work names. This is much more feasible with SeptimusHeap's concept.

As to linking to blank pages that have an English version, a data structure can be set up to collect different language aliases for each page. You will probably need to do this anyway for other reasons.

Automatically opening the English page has the benefit of reducing the number of steps the non-English language user has to take to still use the wiki. Another step can be to offer to automatically translate the page using google translate.

edited 27th Feb '16 9:08:52 PM by war877

There's no reason why one can't store language-specific alternate titles for each article. The underlying data mechanism would be the same regardless of the URL used to arrive there.

Google Translate is far too low quality to be used for this, I think.

Given how long ago I made that post, I don't remember what I was thinking, but one problem that will be run into is name collisions. For example, a french article named bras, and an english article named bras.

Now that I think about it, that's pretty unlikely, given most collisions will be pages about the exact same work of fiction.

Remember that all articles will have internal ID values that will uniquely identify them, so in the event of a name collision, the system can generate a disambiguation prompt/page. One can, of course, remove the ambiguity by including the language parameter in the link (https://tvtropes.org/wiki/Bras/en, in this example.)

Further, one imagines that the disambiguator can be made smart enough to recognize a user's default language preference and prefer results matching that language. So, if you're set to prefer French and there is a title conflict between English and French articles, it could assume you meant the French one and give you the option to go to the other one if you desire (header link or some such).

Yeah, that is all possible. That would be how you'd do it.