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Make the page title optionally translatable when using the Translate extension
Closed, ResolvedPublic

Description

Some cases you don't want to translate the title. Even better if you could change the title text that is shown to translators.


Version: unspecified
Severity: enhancement
See Also:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=66634

Details

Reference
bz34098

Event Timeline

bzimport raised the priority of this task from to Low.Nov 22 2014, 12:13 AM
bzimport set Reference to bz34098.

Yes, being able to exclude the page title from translation could help saving translators' time in many cases.

Examples:

In this case, the title was needlessly translated into 73 languages:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:MessageGroupStats&x=D&group=page-FDC%20portal/Proposals/CentralNotice2012&suppressempty=1

Or, all the multilingual blog posts for the Wikimedia blog which are now being drafted and translated on Meta (e.g.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Blog/Drafts/Helana_and_Mina_profile )

Usually, though, what you don't want to translate it only the namespace or basepagename.

hotuankiet wrote:

Is there anybody who is working in this issue?

At the top were the fields are, you can see field 'assigned to' with value 'nobody'. This is a strong indicator that nobody is currently working on this issue.

I'm actually not sure if "enhancement" is the right classification for the severity of this bug. It looks like it is continuing to waste a considerable amount of volunteer translator time (go to https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&limit=500&translations=only and search for "page display title").

Those seem legitimate uses of page display title translations.

(In reply to comment #6)

Those seem legitimate uses of page display title translations.

That's a dynamic link with changing content of course, but to pick two examples from the current list:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translations:Template:OTRS/Page_display_title/el
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translations:Fundraising_2012/Translation/Drop_down_banner/Page_display_title/nn

(In reply to comment #5)

I'm actually not sure if "enhancement" is the right classification for the
severity of this bug. It looks like it is continuing to waste a considerable
amount of volunteer translator time (go to
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:
RecentChanges&limit=500&translations=only
and search for "page display title").

Enhancement is the correct classification for this feature request. Especially in translatable pages, the page content contains many more words than the page title. "waste a considerable amount of volunteer translator time" is wording that could be perceived as counter productive, and I'm pretty certain it's untrue, with reference to my first statement.

I've lowered priority because I'm not convinced that the value of this feature is high compared to other things we can do with LangEng's developer's time.

Patches are welcome and will be reviewed.

(In reply to comment #8)

"waste a considerable amount of volunteer translator time"
is wording that could be perceived as counter productive

It is strong wording from someone with @wikimedia.org address but if you consider how the translate extension is actually used, it is often true that you do *not* need a translation of the page title while "could be perceived as counter productive" sounds like a threat by my boss leaving aside whether clicking the "copy original text"-button and then pressing save is really time-consuming. I am more concerned it could be confusing for translators which parts of the title are to be translated.

I'd even call this a severe bug:

Normally display title and page name (e.g. what {{FULLPAGENAME}} returns) are supposed to be equivalent. So I can copy/paste the display title into my browser's URL bar and reach the correct page. Or I can copy/paste the display title into a Wikilink and it links to the correct page. The only function that can normally change a display title (the {{DISPLAYTITLE:}} magic word) makes sure that this is *always* true.

With the possibility to translate display titles, we *break* this fundamental and important functionality. If I use a translated display title as an URL or in a Wikilink, I'm most likely to end up with a red-link to a non-existent page. This is very bad since it conceals the real page name. How are people not involved into technical stuff supposed to understand what the actual name of a page is (if not what is displayed as a header)?

I'd strongly recommend to fix this bug and by default disable page title translations. They severely break stuff!

(In reply to comment #10)

Normally display title and page name (e.g. what {{FULLPAGENAME}} returns) are
supposed to be equivalent. So I can copy/paste the display title into my
browser's URL bar and reach the correct page. Or I can copy/paste the display
title into a Wikilink and it links to the correct page. The only function
that
can normally change a display title (the {{DISPLAYTITLE:}} magic word) makes
sure that this is *always* true.

Only if it is configured to do that.

The preferred way to link to translatable pages is not to link directly to the page anyway but to use Special:MyLanguage.

(In reply to comment #11)

The preferred way to link to translatable pages is not to link directly to the
page anyway but to use Special:MyLanguage.

Which causes [[Special:WhatLinksHere]] not to show it. Is this already tracked?

(In reply to Rainer Rillke @commons.wikimedia from comment #12)

Is this already tracked?

Now it is: bug 61547.

Change 138581 had a related patch set uploaded by Kunalgrover05:
Make page title optionally translatable

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/138581

Change 138581 merged by jenkins-bot:
Make page title optionally translatable

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/138581