Commons:Preparing a page for translation

Here are the basic steps that help you creating a translatable page that can use the benefits of the translate extension:

Read the manual.
Really, do: in all likelihood, that's where the information you are looking for is waiting for you.

Assess whether the page is suitable for translation or needs translation.

• Local projects may not need translation.
• Some pages have a structure that may not be suitable for translation.
• If you need help, ask an active translation administrator or at the Translators' noticeboard.

Assess whether you are capable to migrate existing translations to the new system. It may be a lot of work to copy the old translation into the new one. If you aren't able to spend a lot of time or you are unable to find the proposed translation units in the new system, ask for help. Do not proceed until you are sure that you and the people who promised to help are able to migrate everything within a few days, and if it is a policy, even within a few hours. Whether you have the capabilities to migrate to the new system usually depends on

• The volume of existing translations
• The status of the existing translations (outdated, current)
• The page length and structure

• Beispiel → Example/de
• Exemple → Example/fr
• Ekzemplo → Example/eo
• Eksempel → Example/da
• …
• Local name → English name/langcode

Move all existing translations to the corresponding subpages. Example: If there is a French translation for Example which is located at Exemple, you have to move it to Example/fr to ensure that the page history, which also serves for the attribution requirement of the Creative Commons License under which all texts at Commons are licensed, is retained. If you do not move it, the subpages created by the Extension (as soon as a translation to one language was started) must be deleted and the page where the translation was copied from must be moved there (both moving to and deleting a subpage require temporary unmarking a page from translation). After moving, the deleted revisions can be restored (History merge).

Prepare the page for translation. Some templates were designed to help keeping it easy for the translators. Further help is available in the manual.

Mark the page for translation (you must be translation admin for doing so). FuzzyBot will now overwrite all existing translations with the source version (English). So hurry to complete the next step.

Paste all old translations into the new interface. This can take a considerable amount of time.