Extension:Translate - MediaWiki (original) (raw)

Languages:

Translate Release status: stable

Implementation	Special page , Locale , API , Parser function
Description	Enables in-wiki translation and proofreading
Author(s)	Niklas Laxström, Siebrand Mazeland and others
Latest version	2025-07-31
Compatibility policy	Master maintains backward compatibility.
MediaWiki	>= 1.46.0
Database changes	Yes
Composer	mediawiki/translate
Virtual domain	virtual-translate
Tables revtag translate_groupreviews translate_groupstats translate_messageindex translate_metadata translate_reviews translate_sections translate_stash translate_tms translate_tmt translate_tmf translate_cache translate_translatable_bundles
Parameters wgTranslateFuzzyBotNamewgTranslateFuzzyBotName wgTranslateFuzzyBotNamewgTranslatePageTranslationULS wgTranslateEnableMessageGroupSubscriptionwgTranslateEnableMessageGroupSubscription wgTranslateEnableMessageGroupSubscriptionwgTranslateUseSandbox wgTranslateGroupSynchronizationCachewgTranslateGroupSynchronizationCache wgTranslateGroupSynchronizationCachewgTranslateUserManagerName wgTranslateSandboxLimitwgTranslateSandboxLimit wgTranslateSandboxLimitwgTranslateStatsProviders wgPageTranslationAllowedContentModelswgPageTranslationAllowedContentModels wgPageTranslationAllowedContentModelswgTranslateGroupAliases wgTranslateRcFilterDefaultwgTranslateRcFilterDefault wgTranslateRcFilterDefaultwgTranslateAuthorExclusionList wgTranslateKeepOutdatedTranslationswgTranslateKeepOutdatedTranslations wgTranslateKeepOutdatedTranslationswgTranslateGroupRoot wgTranslatePageMoveLimitwgTranslatePageMoveLimit wgTranslatePageMoveLimitwgEnablePageTranslation wgTranslateEnableMessageBundleIntegrationwgTranslateEnableMessageBundleIntegration wgTranslateEnableMessageBundleIntegrationwgTranslatePermissionUrl wgTranslateEnableEventLoggingwgTranslateEnableEventLogging wgTranslateEnableEventLoggingwgTranslatePageTranslationBannerNamespaces wgTranslateSupportUrlNamespacewgTranslateSupportUrlNamespace wgTranslateSupportUrlNamespacewgTranslateMessagePrefixStatsLimit wgTranslateDisabledTargetLanguageswgTranslateDisabledTargetLanguages wgTranslateDisabledTargetLanguageswgTranslateMessageIndex wgTranslateRecentChangesLanguageFilterwgTranslateRecentChangesLanguageFilter wgTranslateRecentChangesLanguageFilterwgTranslateDocumentationLanguageCode wgTranslateTranslationDefaultServicewgTranslateTranslationDefaultService wgTranslateTranslationDefaultServicewgTranslateTranslationServices wgTranslateGroupFileswgTranslateGroupFiles wgTranslateGroupFileswgTranslateUsePreSaveTransform wgTranslateEnableLuaIntegrationwgTranslateEnableLuaIntegration wgTranslateEnableLuaIntegrationwgTranslateValidationExclusionFile wgTranslateSandboxPromotedGroupwgTranslateSandboxPromotedGroup wgTranslateSandboxPromotedGroupwgTranslateYamlLibrary wgTranslateCacheDirectorywgTranslateCacheDirectory wgTranslateCacheDirectorywgPageTranslationLanguageList wgTranslateLanguageFallbackswgTranslateLanguageFallbacks wgTranslateLanguageFallbackswgTranslateSupportUrl wgTranslateMessageNamespaceswgTranslateMessageNamespaces wgTranslateMessageNamespaceswgTranslateWorkflowStates
Added rights translate translate-empty-category translate-import translate-manage translate-messagereview translate-groupreview unfuzzy
Hooks used AbuseFilter-builder AbuseFilter-computeVariable AbuseFilterAlterVariables AdminLinks AfterImportPage AlternateEdit ApiCheckCanExecute ArticleContentOnDiff ArticleDeleteComplete ArticlePrepareTextForEdit ArticleViewHeader ChangeTagsListActive ChangesListSpecialPageQuery ChangesListSpecialPageStructuredFilters CodeEditorGetPageLanguage DeleteAccount EditFilterMergedContent EditPage::showEditForm:initial FetchChangesList GetPreferences LanguageGetTranslatedLanguageNames ListDefinedTags LoadExtensionSchemaUpdates LonelyPagesQuery MakeGlobalVariablesScript MergeAccountFromTo OutputPageParserOutput PageContentLanguage PageSaveComplete ParserAfterTidy ParserFirstCallInit ResourceLoaderRegisterModules RevisionRecordInserted SidebarBeforeOutput SkinTemplateNavigation::Universal SpecialPrefixIndexGetFormFilters SpecialPrefixIndexQuery SpecialRecentChangesPanel SpecialSearchProfileForm SpecialSearchProfiles SpecialSearchSetupEngine TitleGetEditNotices TitleIsAlwaysKnown TitleQuickPermissions Translate:newTranslation TranslateEventMessageMembershipChange TranslateEventTranslationReview TranslateSupportedLanguages UserGetReservedNames UserGetRights getUserPermissionsErrorsExpensive
Hooks provided Translate:GettextFFS:headerFields Translate:MessageGroupStats:isIncluded Translate:modifyMessageGroupStates Translate:newTranslation TranslateBeforeAddModules TranslateEventMessageGroupStateChange TranslateEventMessageMembershipChange TranslateEventTranslationReview TranslateGetAPIMessageGroupsParameterList TranslateGetAPIMessageGroupsPropertyDescs TranslateGetBoxes TranslateGetSpecialTranslateOptions TranslateInitGroupLoaders TranslateMessageGroupPathVariables TranslatePostInitGroups TranslatePrefillTranslation TranslateProcessAPIMessageGroupsProperties TranslateSupportedLanguages TranslateTranslationAids
Licence	GNU General Public License 2.0 or later
Download	Included in Language Extension Bundle Download extension Git [?]: Browse repository (Phabricator · GitHub) Gerrit code review Git commit log Download source tarball User documentation Release notes
Help	Help:Extension:Translate
Example	Translatewiki.net – or try how to translate a page now
Translate the Translate extension
Issues	Open tasks · Report a bug

The Translate extension enhances MediaWiki with essential features needed to do translation work. It enables in-wiki translation and proofreading. It can be used to translate the content pages, the interface of the wiki and even other software products, as it is used at translatewiki.net and to manage multilingual wikis.

Features

The Translate extension has many features specifically targeted to translators, while making back-end integration with actual source code as easy as possible. Meanwhile, everything runs inside MediaWiki, which allows users an almost endless degree of freedom for communication and self-organization.

Features include:

Structured wiki content page translation, from various languages at the same wiki.
In-wiki localisation and exporting of software interface messages (or just about anything).
Web-based translation and proofreading interface, as well as gettext based export and import for off-line translation.
Various aids to make the job of translators easier:
- display of translations in globally defined other languages, optionally expanded with user defined languages;
- collaborative editing of documentation of the use and context of messages;
- translation memory and machine translation with external tools (Apertium, Microsoft Translator, Yandex.Translate);
- display of the latest change in the source message;
- warnings about common mistakes like parameters that are not used.
Pre-made modules for various open source products you can use as an example.
- Support for various formats including: PHP, Java properties, Gettext, YAML and AndroidXml. Learn more about file format support (FFS) classes and see the full FFS list.
A versatile plug-in system to make it easy to add new projects as a message group.
Various statistics:
- translation completion percentages for all message groups in all supported languages;
- translation completion percentages in all supported languages for any supported message group;
- tool for making activity graphs for spans of time. Can display either number of edits or active users daily or hourly and includes many filters;
- cloud overview of active languages and translators.

Translate extension, due to its large user base, is confirmed to be compatible with all reasonably recent browsers, except some minor (style) glitches which are quickly fixed.

Making Multilingual Wikis a Reality: this presentation shows how the Translate extension can make a wiki truly multilingual, based on the experience of KDE UserBase wiki.
Niklas Laxström, Translating the wiki way: Simple, fast, fun, Wikimania 2012 (slides available).

Support and documentation

See Installation
See Configuration
See User documentation – includes tutorials
See Getting started with Translate extension development
Live support at #translatewiki IRC channel at Libera Chat (best times are at European days and evenings)
Please report all issues and feature requests in the issue tracker

Translate extension was originally developed by User:Nikerabbit; many other users, like User:Raymond, User:SPQRobin and the Wikimedia Language team, have contributed to its code and documentation.

Prominent users of the Translate extension

https://translatewiki.net – The biggest wiki-based site and community for translation of the interface of open source software.
https://userbase.kde.org – Documentation wiki for the KDE project which uses the page translation feature extensively.
https://meta.wikimedia.org – Translates wiki content and uses the group states feature. Translation and translation review is enabled almost for all users of the wiki.
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/

See more at notable uses of translatewiki.net on Wikipedia.

Testimonials

Tom Hutchison of Joomla:

The Translate extension allows for connection to a translation service and can auto fill the translation for you. At the same time a translator can make adjustments so you're not creating lots of pages with inaccurate translations.

That's ok if they are on different continents. That is actually a plus because work is getting done 24 hours a day. What they need is a support group chat for each other. They would all be able to read English if they are translating right? Teach a few simple wiki markup such as links and what to do with categories. Then they help others who in turn help others. We have over 40 in a chat who help each other and have fun at the same time. And they were all scared of the wiki but couldn't believe how easy it was once they started. They are actually waiting on me for more translations to do because I can't keep up with them. I know there is only 1 translating this language or that language. We have that too. One person is doing Swahili while another one is working on Japanese. Also, you mark pages for translation. You control whether to include templates or exclude variables in template calls.

How to contribute

This extension is being used on one or more Wikimedia projects. This probably means that the extension is stable and works well enough to be used by such high-traffic websites. Look for this extension's name in Wikimedia's CommonSettings.php and InitialiseSettings.php configuration files to see where it's installed. A full list of the extensions installed on a particular wiki can be seen on the wiki's Special:Version page.