Help:Language translation

Team Fortress Wiki is capable of handling multilingual content and providing the reader a user interface in their preferred language. Multilingual editors are encouraged to translate and maintain articles in as many different languages as possible to reach the whole TF2 global community. Maintaining up to date translated articles is very important and it should be noted that it is preferential to have an up to date English article, rather than an out of date translated one.

How to translate a page

Follow these guidelines to start translating an article.

1. Check that your language is supported (see List of supported languages below). We support all languages that have official in-game translations.
2. Go to the English version of the article's page and click "Edit this page". Select everything in the box and copy it. Now go to your new article title and paste

   The French version of the article "Hats" would be Hats/fr, not Chapeaux, Hats/Chapeaux or Chapeaux/fr

3. Add the template {{Trans}} to the top of the page. This keeps all incompleted articles in your language together.

   For French you would put: {{trans|French}}

4. Use {{DISPLAYTITLE:abcxyz}} to show a translated title.

   For example: {{DISPLAYTITLE:Flammenwerfer}} would show the title "Flammenwerfer" while keeping the real article title as "Flamethrower/de".

5. Change the categories at the bottom of the page.

   For example: becomes . Do this for all categories at the bottom of the page.

6. You can now translate the rest of the article. Note that some text is stored in other pages (called "templates"). To translate these you will have to edit them individually.

Multilingual guidelines

• English is the main reference language, and all root pages should be named and written in English.
• Other languages should be placed in an appropriately named sub-page of the English version.
  • e.g. the French version of Hats should be at Hats/fr, not Chapeaux, Hats/Chapeaux or Chapeaux/fr
  • You can, however, change the displayed title of an article – see below
• Language subpages should use the appropriate ISO 639 code (as listed below)
• If an international version of a page exists but an English version does not, then please create a stub article for the English version as this aids navigation.
• The use of {{Languages}} at the bottom of articles is now discouraged, as language links appear in the sidebar.
• While in the process of translating articles, using {{Trans|Japanese}} is encouraged to display to other editors that the article is a work in progress.
• Please do not sign articles using the 4 tildes ("~~~~"). The list of people who contributed to the article is always available in the history (click the tab at the top of the page), so it is not necessary to sign.

On the wiki

• Edit summaries
  • Edit summaries should be in English. This is important as everyone needs to understand what was changed without having to copy & paste stuff into Google Translator.
• Talk pages
  • Also in English. Casual chat between users in other languages is okay, but it is preferred if discussion related to articles is kept in English.

Articles

• Displaying a different title
  • Displaying a title in a different language is possible with the use of the magic word {{DISPLAYTITLE:}}.
  • For example, using {{DISPLAYTITLE:Example}} will display the article name as Example.
• Infoboxes
  • To display a new name in an infobox, add a new line like this:

    {{Weapon infobox

    | name = Name goes here

    | weapon-image = ...

• Links
  • You can link to translated articles and display different text for the links like this:
    • Armes will create Armes.
  • If using external links that are in English, you should also use the template {{lang icon}} directly after the link to indicate the language of the external link.
    • Google on Soldier/fr should look like [http://www.google.com/ Google] {{lang icon|en}}, which will generate:

    Google (English)

  • {{Main}} and {{See also}} – When using these templates you can display a different title using the parameter l1 (lowercase L1):

  {{Main|Hats/fr|l1=Chapeaux}} generates

  Main article: Chapeaux

  {{Main|Hats/fr|l1=Chapeaux|Miscellaneous items/fr|l2=Objets divers}} generates

  Main articles: Chapeaux and Objets divers

  Note: To change the "Main article:" text, see the individual template pages for {{main}} and {{see also}} as they use translation switching.

• Categories
  • Language pages should be kept in separate categories.
  • For example on Wrench/fr, if you find at the bottom of the page, change it to .

Templates

The majority of templates should use translation switching, with the exception of navigational boxes. Previously it was necessary to create a localized version of a template, e.g. Template:Hat infobox/ru. Now localized text is stored in one template, where text for all languages is stored. Please see Help:Translation switching for further information.

List of supported languages

Team Fortress Wiki supports language translation of articles into 21 languages, the majority of which have localization files for TF2. There are no plans to add support for any further languages at this time.

The reasoning for this is that the workload for translators who do not have support from the Steam Translation Server (in the form of word lists, nouns, etc, and proper discussion channels) is significantly higher. The amount of active translators is also less, meaning pages can quickly become out of date. Support for the translation of articles into a specific language will now only be considered if there are localization files present in the game.

The languages highlighted in the table below are exceptions to the rule. Czech and Brazilian Portuguese are being actively translated on STS and may have localization files appear in the game soon, and support for Arabic has been extended due to the amount of existing Arabic content.

 Note: please do not translate articles into languages not listed below, as they will be removed.

Page Name	Language
Main Page	English
Main Page/ar	Arabic
Main Page/cs	Czech
Main Page/da	Danish
Main Page/de	German
Main Page/es	Spanish
Main Page/fi	Finnish
Main Page/fr	French
Main Page/hu	Hungarian
Main Page/it	Italian
Main Page/ja	Japanese
Main Page/ko	Korean
Main Page/nl	Dutch
Main Page/no	Norwegian
Main Page/pl	Polish
Main Page/pt	Portuguese
Main Page/pt-br	Portuguese (Brazil)
Main Page/ro	Romanian
Main Page/ru	Russian
Main Page/sv	Swedish
Main Page/zh-hans	Chinese (Simplified)
Main Page/zh-hant	Chinese (Traditional)