Tuesday, December 20, 2011

The return of the LocalisationUpdate

The #MediaWiki localisation is a continuous process. A continuous process because MediaWiki development is a continuous process as well. For some languages everything is done, for others the localisation is very much a work in progress.

As a lot of work is involved in getting all the localisations done, making sure that people remain motivated is a challenge. The reasons for them to localise are:

  • it is the best usability improvement available for any language
  • localisation is a requirement when new projects are requested
Such arguments are a bit abstract. What does convince many people is making the latest localisations available on a daily basis to all wikis. This is what the LocalisationUpdate extension is there for. It is why almost every day the latest localisations done at translatewiki.net are committed to SVN.

Something broke in the beginning of November but today the server admin log finally indicated: 
02:04 logmsgbot: LocalisationUpdate completed (1.18) at Tue Dec 20 02:07:54 UTC 2011
On many wikis it will be noticeable that a months worth of localisations became available. It will be good when the people who lost some of their motivation will give translatewiki.net another try. They will see again how much difference their effort makes. Not only because their work goes rapidly into production but also because it is and remains the best usability improvement for their language.
Thanks,
        GerardM

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