Are there plans to translate the site into Spanish and Italian?

Question

Hi

I have worked as English language translator English <--> Spanish and I could collaborate to translate the site into this language. There are 585 millions o persons who speak Spanish in the world...

Italian would be another language where I could help.

In both cases: Spanish and Italian, I could collaborate with other members to translate the site into those languages.

Let me know how could I help.

Comments

Hi, Pedro --

I added a couple of project tags to your post to get the attention of the Spain and Italy Projects. They would probably welcome your language skills. :-)

Answer 1

Hi

So, looks like there are technical impediments that prevent this site from being multilanguage... What kind of tec impediments are these?  I'm a telco engineer with knowledges of IT and maybe I could work with the teams that are dealing with these impediments.

Comments

My understanding is that WikiTree has been built using the MediaWiki software. However it uses a very old version (v1.11.0?) that has been heavily customised, so updating it to the latest version would be a very big exercise (see https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/726920/wikitrees-version-of-mediawiki). Since WikiTree is free it only has a very small development team, which is already very busy with routine maintenance and enhancements. There does appear to now be a MediaWiki extension that might allow WikiTree to be made multilanguage, but it requires version v1.35 or later (see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Translate).

---

To add: the modifications are closed source, so helping out is very difficult/impossible unless you are part of the dev team.

---

So the issues are:

1.- Wikitree software is closed source maintained by a small team of volunteers that don't see the benefits of multilingual

2.- Wikitree is based on MediaWiki ver like v1.11.0, with many customizations.

3.- Multilinugual MediaWiki extension requires v1.35 or later

I've got a couple of questions for the development Team (devOps Teams doesn't exist, AFAIK):  Would it be possible to have a copy of the WikiTree software with the version that is currently running?  What tech requirements would it have to run a local copy in a restricted network?

---

Pedro, not sure if your request will be read here. It is best to contact the team, specifically the tech contact person there via email.

The tech team that creates applications is the WT_Apps team, see their page how to join. They use a mailing list to communicate.

Answer 2

It would be wonderful if you can help. There are teams for Italy and Spain. You might attract them by tagging your post. There are also language volunteers, that frequently help with translations.

For translation of website parts: that is a big wish of many but not being worked on by the team. The argument I have read many times is that we all speak English here, so it is not important (enough). There are no technical options for a good and multi language website here as far as I know.

edit:typo

Comments

The circularity of that argument is astonishing.

---

Providing multiple iterations of WikiTree in different languages is not a simple undertaking and would require technical resources that we don't currently have.

While it would be a really nice to provide that for our members, a solution hasn't been found yet.

---

Michel, you are mistaken, there are projects that are translating the multiple help pages etc into another language.  It's a very long process.  Look at the help index just to get a notion of how big the job is.  There is a technical adjunct on various things like categories etc that can tag with a specific language when wanted.

---

Danielle,

I know about the help pages, I am talking about the interface. See the other discussions, amongst those the problems with the Google search index to actually find the help pages.

---

Michel, I never use Googlesearch to find help pages, I just go to the help index.  Google takes you all over the map too easily. 

Answer 3

For reference, the France Project has done a wonderful job translating a lot of Wikitree pages into French for the utilization of French-speaking Wikitreers. Par example: Category: France (wikitree.com)

Something similar for the Spain and Italy projects would be wonderful to see. A lot of the major genealogy sites like Ancestry and Familysearch lack a lot of sources for what I like to call 'Catholic Europe', which includes both Spain and Italy (and colonies). There's some records on those sites but not many in comparison to the Anglosphere. This means a lot of people with ancestry from those places tend to get stalled out at their immigrant ancestor. More links to ways to research one's Italian and/or Spanish ancestors would probably be greatly appreciated.

Comments

The German Translation team has also translated the complete WikiTree-Help to German. While this is not what many not-English-natives want, it is better than nothing. It would be good if there would be a Spanish and Italian translation of the Help section.

---

As Jelena said, we managed to translate all German help pages (I did the proof reading). We did hard work for over a year with five people, all volunteering. Whyever, technically - translated help pages go offline again, as soon as the English page is edited. So it some people doing new translations and updates all the time. That would be the case for all languages. As much as I understand, the French translating team stopped after the most needed pages, because it was too much work.

I would love to have many different lanugages both for the help pages and the surface (menu etc.). It would make WikiTree stand out and attract a lot of European genealogists who already researched their family tree for many years, but don't want to join WikiTree, because they don't understand English.

But from what I understand, the problem with translating WikiTree is not only technically: we use English to work together, and if there are many WikiTreers who can't collaborate with others, WikiTree wouldn't work anymore.

For sources: we have the Italy and Spain projects that have project pages with sources listed, so that already happened :-).
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Italian_Roots_Resources
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Spanish_Resources
If you know good sources that are missing there, you can comment on those pages.

Answer 4

As Julie has said (and others have explained), it's very difficult to make the interface multi-lingual with all of the text being within each PHP page.  I've been trying to translate the interface into French within my Chrome extension , but I don't have much help, and it's not easy... 

Having said that, I do think that it's essential for WikiTree to somehow change the software to allow it to be multi-lingual as all modern international websites are these days.  The world tree cannot only be in English. It simply can't.  

[edited a typo]

Comments

I agree it needs to be multi-lingual, I know more than one person who would have participated if it had been, but being only in English, they abstained.

I remember a conversation on this subject in G2G quite a while back, where I was told that to change the system would cost some fair bit of money, never mind all the fancy programming our team has been doing.

Meanwhile, I learned that MyHeritage has just bought Filae, for those who use that for their sources.

Answer 5

He querido ver versiones de WikiTree en diferentes idiomas prácticamente desde el día en que me uní, y en mi lista de deseos personal para WikiTree, actualizar WikiTree a la versión actual de MediaWiki para que podamos usar varios idiomas sería el elemento n. ° 1 (y 2, y 3). 

Lo mismo ocurre con los que han dicho que traduciendo las páginas de ayuda al español y al italiano.

También agregaría que tengo muchas ganas de ver la estructura de categorías completamente replicada en otros idiomas. La gente no debería tener que aprender inglés para usar categorías. Las categorías son demasiado importantes para restringir su uso a un subconjunto de WikiTreers.

Y debo señalar que cualquiera que argumente que el inglés es lo suficientemente bueno porque todos en WikiTree ya usan el inglés que tenemos un flujo constante de personas que hablan otros idiomas que vienen, échale un vistazo, mira que la interfaz de usuario solo está disponible en inglés. , concluye (no sin razón) que WikiTree no está interesado en su idioma o país, y luego vete. Aprecio profundamente a aquellas personas cuyo primer idioma no es el inglés que se quedan y ayudan, porque los necesitamos desesperadamente, pero cada día que WikiTree es solo en inglés es un día en el que desperdiciamos la oportunidad de reclutar a las mismas personas con habilidades lingüísticas que nosotros necesitamos.