Translations needed
Prior to our grand reopening of Familypedia when we announce full support for our new SMW templates, we shall be making a pitch that we are the only comprehensive multilingual genealogy site on the web. For this launch, we will need Home pages in German and Spanish, which according to Wikia staff are the two most popular languages besides English in use by visitors to Wikia.
Clearly much of the wealth of information on our home page will be difficult to fully support- For example I have statically linked the feature of the day to a page in German and Spanish. We will probably need translations of the introductory help articles.
If anyone has the time or inclination, feel free to take a whack and translating or improving the pages, or if you wish, a language of your choosing. Just follow the spanish language example and I'll link it up from the main menu so people go there when they are logged in with that language.
German
- German: Familienforschung und Genealogie-Wiki (.de)
- Template:Mainbody (.de)/Welcome
- Template:Mainbody (.de)
- Template:Mainbody (.de)/Places
- Template:Featured article (.de)
Spanish
- Spanish: Historia Familiar y Genealogía Wiki (.es)
- Template:Mainbody (.es)/Welcome
- Template:Mainbody(.es)
- Template:Mainbody (.es)/Places
- Template:Featured article (.es)
Dutch
I note a lot of Dutch articles with the .nl suffix popping up. Maybe for the benefit of users preferring dutch we could have a .nl homepage? Eg, with dutch articles featured and so on. ~ Phlox 17:36, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
- Dutch: Genealogie Wiki Hoofdpagina (.nl) - Fred and rtol can rename it
- They already have a slight advantage on the current main page. We have the experts who can enhance that advantage, and at least one of them can do that without taking time off from valuable SMW-related work. Fred? http://wiki-nl.genealogy.net/Hoofdpagina may inspire some phrases. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 06:59, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
French
Comparisons
To be moderately sure we are "the only comprehensive multilingual genealogy site on the web" (or whatever alternative claim we settle on), we should compare with some of the possible competition. List and evaluate below. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 06:59, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
- To be moderately sure, we could use a french home page. How about it? ~ Phlox 08:27, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
GenWiki
Mostly German - 183,000 pages but with a substantial skeleton English version - 1,642 pages and other versions (da 400 pages, fr (GeneaWiki) 83,000 pages and nl 65 pages;) "designed to become the main source for genealogy in the German-speaking areas of the world". A search for the word "semantic" in the English version is "encouraging".
Progress
As of the time of this writing, after a week all that I see that has been produced is redlinks. If this boat needs to be towed alone, that's fine with me- but no fair complaining about slow progress. Another forum thread celebrates that we have 500 more articles. Is it too difficult to realize how many multilingual articles we could have at the drop of a hat? Tens of thousands. But that bulk import will spur curiosity, and the most precious asset are our future contributors- so if visitors come here and everything is in a ludicrous state then they will form a negative first impression. It would be a squandered opportunity. Let's not too quickly dismiss this as dramatic exaggeration. Consider it. Wouldn't the absence of a home page in one of the major European languages indeed be a ludicrous state of affairs for a so called "multilingual site"? ~ Phlox 18:09, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
- First layer of Dutch is done. rtol 11:52, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
- Featured article (.de) and (.es) lead to a specific article, while the English version is a template that puts as star on the FAs in the archive. rtol 11:55, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
- It was a hack, since due to the low interest level it was a fair assumption that no one would maintain the weekly article link. If you can maintain, or you can make a template that rotates them so it doesn't require maintenance as the english one does, then that would be much more ideal. ~ Phlox 18:31, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
- There are not enough high quality and unrelated articles in Dutch for a weekly rotation, so I'd link to the featured article in English instead. rtol 05:40, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
- It was a hack, since due to the low interest level it was a fair assumption that no one would maintain the weekly article link. If you can maintain, or you can make a template that rotates them so it doesn't require maintenance as the english one does, then that would be much more ideal. ~ Phlox 18:31, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
That's up to the Dutch familypedia community. I would think that on a russian home page, Russian visitors would prefer a link to an article that has cyrillic characters so they can see an example of how good a Russian article can be, and indirectly answer their question whether the site is capable of serving their needs.
When you have completed the Dutch home page, please link whatever you name it into the {{tabs language}} template on the english page. ~ Phlox 18:02, 3 August 2009 (UTC)