This document summarizes Tim Bartel's presentation on pushing internationalization at Wikia. Some key points: - Wikia operates over 130,000 wikis in 220+ languages and has partnered with translatewiki.net (twn) to improve localization. - Through this partnership, tens of thousands of messages have been translated into 19+ languages with 11 languages now fully translated. - Moving forward, Wikia and twn aim to further automate processes, gain more insights, and translate elements beyond just MediaWiki messages to continue expanding support for international users.

1. Pushing MediaWiki
Internationalization
Insights into MediaWiki i18n at a
large multi-language service provider
Tim Bartel Wikimania 2010

2. ● 130,000+ wikis in 220+ languages
● 2,000,000+ user accounts
● Top 80 Website
● ~33 mm unique users per month
● 2/3 international
● 250+ MediaWiki extensions
● Free license
Tim Bartel Wikimania 2010

3. "Wikia was founded by Jimmy Wales and
Angela Beesley with a mission to enable
communities to create, share and discover
content on any topic in any language.”
English is the native language
of only ~30% of the Internet's
population. Let's not alienate
the other 70%.
“Mission statement” from our About Wikia page
Tim Bartel Wikimania 2010

4. ● Internationalization = i18n / Localization = L10n
● Adapting our software to different languages and regional
differences
● Language
● Word order
● Encoding
● Different formatting/conventions (e.g. dates, sort order)
● Text processing (e.g. capitalization)
● Writing direction
● Mostly “simple” translations, but:
● Many L10n issues require more profound
changes than simple text translations.
Tim Bartel Wikimania 2010

5. Problems
● More wikis, users, extensions, languages
● How should the rollout be handled?
– Activate globally
(messages will show up in English)
– Activate on a per language base
(per request/if i18n is ready)
● Organizational overhead
does not scale
● Best solution: User based
Tim Bartel Wikimania 2010

6. translatewiki.net (twn)
● Localization community for MediaWiki and other
open-source projects
● Becoming more and more a “standard” way for i18n
Why is twn an interesting partner?
● Active translation community
● Languages Wikia's team never even heard of
● Users striving for perfection
● Statistics! With colored bars!
Tim Bartel Wikimania 2010

7. Technical background (short!)
Local
Messaging
Code
Empty
Tim Bartel Wikimania 2010

8. Technical background (short!)
Local
Messaging
Code twn
Replication of translated
Empty MediaWiki messages
Tim Bartel Wikimania 2010

9. Wikia translatewiki.net
Benefits
● Less organizational overhead ● Supporting the mission of twn
● More translators ● Learning for future co-operations
● Pure number of translations ● Having a good example/case study
● Bigger userbase/new opportunities to show interested parties
● Quality of translations/additional QA ● Development by Wikia
● Gaining more insights into i18n
Shortcomings
● Messages won't go live instantly ● Deal with the fact that Wikia is a
● Coordination needed between us/twn commercial company
● More work for engineering ● Reaction time to bug reports
● Need to meet certain standards ● Clash between volunteers and
● Better documentation paid people “doing their job”
● Matching with Messaging ● …
● twn guys may break our code ● Wikia devs may break twn work
Tim Bartel Wikimania 2010

10. Results since start of cooperation
● Since Feb 2010 tens of thousands messages
were translated (15,000+ during first weeks)
● 19+ languages have now more than 50% of
all messages translated (before: ~8)
● 11+ languages have now 100% of all messages
translated (before: 3)
● Lots of new translators (~15 → ~60)
Tim Bartel Wikimania 2010

11. Outlook (What can be done better?)
● LocalisationUpdate (explain)
● Instant replication of messages
● Translate more than MediaWiki
messages only (e.g. Help pages)
● Better statistics
● Gain more insights
● Automate certain actions
(e.g. activate extensions at
Wikia once it's fully translated)
Tim Bartel Wikimania 2010

12. What can you do?
● Join in as translator at translatewiki.net
● Become active inside Wikia's meta community
● Tell us if you spot any errors
● ...
Thanks!
Tim Bartel Wikimania 2010