Section translation
is an expansion of the current
Content Translation
capabilities.
Section translation enables users to expand existing Wikipedia articles by translating new sections.
In addition, Section Translation is designed to work on mobile devices (in addition to desktop) using
a modernized front-end architecture
.
In this way, users will have new opportunities to translate that were not possible with Content Translation before.
Section translation is the main project of the
Boost initiative
which is aimed at expanding the use of translation to help more communities to grow.
Below you can find more information about the wikis the project will be focusing on.
Please, provide any feedback about this initiative
in the discussion page
.
We are interested in hearing your ideas on how to help communities grow by using translation.
More details and updates are provided below.
Section translation is in early development.
For now it is
available at a test server
and Wikipedias in several languages:
Direct access
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Section translation allows to link directly to a pre-selected article or section to translate by defining an appropriate url.
This can be convenient for the integration with external tools.
For example, you can create a link to
translate the Moon article
or
the "Legal status" section of the same article
.
Entry points
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Section Translation is integrated with the Wikipedia language selector on mobile.
Searching for a language in which the article does not exist yet lets you create a translation for it.
This is only available in the languages where Section Translation is already available (which will expand over time).
-
The language selector surfaces options to translate when searching for a language in which the article is missing (and Section Translation is available)
-
Recently published translations in the last 10 days show a notice to encourage their review if they have not been edited since (less than 5 edits). Including an option to expand them by translating a new section.
-
After completing a mobile translation, an invite is shown to translate another section.
These are the main goals for the project and metrics to measure them:
- Grow the community of translators.
Attract more users to translate (using different devices) that remain active over time and help recruit new translators.
- Metric: Increase the percentage of new editors that completed their second translation in a month.
- Grow the content available.
Increase the coverage in both the topics available and their depth (information they contain).
- Metric: Double the number of weekly translations on selected wikis (to create new content or extend existing one).
Content translation
has been successful in supporting the translation process on many Wikipedia communities.
It has already helped to create
thousands of new articles
while encouraging
the creation of good quality translations
.
We want to focus on Wikipedias with potential to grow by using translation.
Research on Section translation and other initiatives to make translation in general more visible such as providing Content Translation access by default (out of beta) will involve and focus on the needs of these particular group of wikis.
This initiative is part of a long-term vision to support cross-wiki content propagation, and it is aligned with the
Wikimedia Foundation plans
to "Grow participation globally, focusing on emerging markets" and increasing "Worldwide readership".
Communities to focus on
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Wikipedias with less than 100K articles, a significant editing activity for the size of their wiki (more than 70 active editors), and making little use of translation currently (less than 100 translations per month).
Given the above, we initially selected the following Wikipedias:
Malayalam
,
Bengali
,
Tagalog
,
Javanese
,
Albanian
, and
Mongolian
.
As the project becomes more visible, other communities showed interest in the project, and some initiatives will be applied there too.
These Wikipedias are
Central Bikol
and
Arabic
.
Additional considerations
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This small group of wikis represents a much larger group of communities that can grow with the proposed improvements.
Selecting a small set allows us to focus and collaborate more closely with them.
Nevertheless, we expect the improvements to benefit a larger number of wikis, and users from all wikis are definitely welcome to participate.
Please, provide any feedback
in the discussion page
.
We are interested in hearing your ideas on how to help communities grow by using translation and Section translation in particular.
You can also check
the project in Phabricator
to track the progress of the different tasks and share any comment about them.
The Language Team is also conducting research to better understand the language-related needs of different wikis.
This research also supports the design process by evaluating ideas around new ways of expanding existing articles and contributing from mobile devices.
- Section Translation Research
? The
Section Translation Design Research project
evaluated current mobile prototypes with two small wikis. The project evaluated not only initial prototypes, but also a number of design changes after each round of testing. The project also supported design exploration by gathering interview data around critical assumptions of Section Translation, including the role of mobile and the relevance of article sections as a meaningful unit of translation.
- Section Translation Usability Testing
?
The Section Translation Usability Testing (Bengali Wikipedia)
project aimed to learn about the experiences of the first editors using Section Translation on the Bengali Wikipedia.
- Section Translation Entry Points Design Research
?
The Section Translation Entry Points Design Research project
investigated new ways that both experienced and new editors may discover translation opportunities, especially on mobile devices.
- Section Translation Post-Improvements Testing
?
The Section Translation Post-Improvements Testing (Thai Wikipedia)
project provided usability testing after a number of tool improvements and at a time when it was becoming available in a greater number of wikis, including Thai Wikipedia.
- Section Translation Feedback Survey
?
Survey feedback
was collected with the goal of learning from the experiences of editors who used Section Translation during a Bengali Wikipedia article quality improvement competition in 2022.
February 2024
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January 2024
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December 2023
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November 2023
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October 2023
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September 2023
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August 2023
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- Enabled
MinT for all the remaining languages supported by NLLB-200
- Mint is now available as the
default service for Zulu in Content Translation
- Explored
support the translation of structured formats with MinT
- Enabled
MinT, Content and Section Translation for a 2nd group of 10 languages previously lacking machine translation
- Enabled
Content and Section translation on 12 Wikipedias
- Completed
initial design exploration
to illustrate 5 concepts on how to surface machine translated contents from other languages for Wikipedia articles
- Support for working on a translation in multiple sessions by
restoring the section title,
supporting translations on a topic for the second time
,
keeping sentence segmentation on restored translations
,
preserving translated templates
, providing support for
continuing a translation after not completing the process to start a new one
,
continuing translations for a different language than the current wiki
,
improving the layout for the dialog shown when leaving a translation
, and
avoiding technical errors when returning to the dashboard
.
- Improved cross-device experience by
supporting on mobile the deletion of in-progress translations that were started on desktop
,
providing stats on mobile about the translations published by the user
like the ones shown on desktop, and making sure
the progress indicators for translation work across platforms
.
- Improved discovery by
showing the right language name for languages with multiple variants
when surfacing missing languages that users can translate into, and
show icons in the user menu
that were not visible due to a regression.
- More solid publishing process by
avoiding the translation of drafts to affect interlanguage links on Wikidata
.
- Platform modernization by
avoiding use of deprecated mobile content REST API
- Better support for templates by
ensuring the template name is shown even when the definition is missing
.
- Improved communication of errors by making sure that
an icon is shown for each type of message
.
- Deprecated
Youdao MT service
- Fix for
Unsupported languages appearing as CX suggestions in ULS
- Support for
pre-select page to translate from missing languages in language selector (mobile and desktop) when target language is not defined
- Removed
VRS code from ContentTranslation
- Content Translation
is now able to use the Parsoid in Mediawiki core
- Small and Medium wikis for
content translation are now able to use Parsoid
- Parsoid is
now usable in all wikis for content translation
- Fix for
PHP Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type null (in TranslationUnitDTO)
- Fix for
TypeError: textblock.getHtml is not a function
- Instrumented
follow-up invite shown after publishing
July 2023
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June 2023
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May 2023
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- Disabled
machine translation for cantonese
from NLLB-200 and Google Translate since current translation services is not providing the language variant that the Cantonese Wikipedia (zh-yue) is using.
- Enabled
Special:Contribute on Desktop
on the following set of Wikipedias; Albanian (sq), Bangla (bn), Malayalam (ml), Mongolian (mn), Tagalog (tl)
- Enabled
Special:Contribute on mobile
on the following set of Wikipedias; Albanian (sq), Bangla (bn), Malayalam (ml), Mongolian (mn), Tagalog (tl)
- Fixed
links not editable in Section Translation editor
- Adjustments for
back navigation for translation editor
to enable users to readjust their action at hand (bookmark for later, change language, select different section, discard, etc.) without losing the previous selection.
April 2023
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March 2023
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- Section translation
enabled for Hindi, Arabic, Portuguese, Catalan and Chinese
&
Kashmiri Wikipedia
- Enabled
Content and Section translation on Hawaiian, Pashto, and Xhosa
- Preparation work for enabling on more wikis
:
Updated section title alignment database
to help in section mapping issues,
Communication when pages are not supported in other languages in the current language selector
,
adjusting the global limit for unedited MT to 95%
, and
defining a protocol to adjust translation limits for specific wikis based on data
- Improve user experience when translating a section on desktop, by
adding a “View page” link, that redirects to the target page
, inside the target column of the Content Translation tool.
- Improved
basic publishing functionality for desktop section translations
- Enhance user experience in Section Translation application, by
supporting continuing an auto-saved translation on mobile,
auto-saving mobile translations on mobile
and
leaving an autosaving translation on mobile
- Improved visibility of
“Add languages” and “Language settings” options inside universal language selector, by providing separate access to them
- Enhance user experience when translating a section on mobile by disp
laying a warning to the user when leaving an in-progress translation, when auto-saving has not been completed
- Fixed
user menu contributor links, showing as a pop up instead of on? the menu
- Fixed section translation
Parallel corpora payload failing to validate during auto-save
- Added
graph for number of users in the unified stats dashboard
- Fix regressions for desktop section and content translation;
Content Translation is broken in test wiki
,
Edit translation button doesn't work for lead sections
,
Published target page title is wrong for lead translations
,
Language selector inside "Confirm Translation" step doesn't work properly
,
CX doesn't load when testing backports on mwdebug servers
February 2023
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January 2023
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December 2022
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November 2022
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October 2022
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September 2022
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- Better experience during
section translation preview and publishing
by updating publish result message when publish target is updated.
- Fixed
regression issue for publishing result explanatory message
, when publishing target is the user's sandbox.
- Fixed
errenours message showing in section translation during translation
- Fixed
publishing failure
by ensuring publish button is enabled after some edits or publish target changed
- Persist
Machine Translation option across sessions in Section Translation application
- Section translation
enabled in 9 wikipedias; Amharic, Bosnian, Cebuano,Haitian Creole,Khmer, Latvian, Odia, Sinhala & Somali; ?
- Enabled content and section translation in
8 Wikipedias with new machine translation support from Google
; Divehi/Maldivian, Ewe, Guarani,Manipuri/Meitei, Quechua, Sanskrit, Tigrinya, and Twi
- Enabled
section translation on 6 wikipedias
; Latin, Hawaiian, Pashto, Russian, Ukrainian and Xhosa.
- Enabled Content and Section Translation in
Bhojpuri Wikipedia
,
Bambara and Goan Konkani
Wikipedias
- Supporting
loading a section contents on a working translation editor
August 2022
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July 2022
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June 2022
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May 2022
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- Section translation enabled on
Hebrew
,
Czech
,
Greek
,
Turkish
,
Korean
,
Zulu
Serbian
Wikipedias (also enabled Content Translation by default).
- Section Translation
enabled on 12 Wikipedias
(Central Bikol, Assamese, Tsonga, Gujarati, Swahili, Urdu, Marathi, Kannada, Nepali, Punjabi, Macedonian, and Icelandic)
- Enabled Content Translation
Korean Wikipedia
- More fluent experience by
supporting scrolling reliably in the dashboard
without getting stuck after a language change and by supporting
refreshing suggestions unlimited times.
- Better code quality by
migrating front-end technology to the latest version
(Vue 3).
- Improved machine translation support by updating the
latest version of Apertium language packages.
- Restricted access to less experienced users
on Vietnamese Wikipedia at community request.
- Compiled translation samples
for evaluating user edits on machine translation for an upcoming research study
- More reliable category support
by avoiding duplicate category prefixes
- Improved suggestions by
ensuring refresh option updates the suggestion lists.
- Improved support for
Right-toLeft languages by resolving issues from the initial RTL review
- More solid access to translate by avoiding loading issues when
accessing the dashboard
- More reliable
access to missing frequent languages
- More solid publishing by
respecting spaces between sentences.
- Enabled
support for machine translation with Flores in Content Translation test instance on a new set of languages
April 2022
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March 2022
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February 2022
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January 2022
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December 2021
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November 2021
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October 2021
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September 2021
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August 2021
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July 2021
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June 2021
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May 2021
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April 2021
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March 2021
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February 2021
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- Created, revised, and tested
protocols for Section Translation research
on the first wiki.
- Temporally hid parts of the Section Translation dashboard
that are not yet supported on mobile so that users can only see fully functional parts of the workflow.
- As part of the "Pick a sentence" step,
users are expected to see only one selected sentence at a time
, which can be highlighted in either yellow (if it has not been translated) or blue (if it was translated already).
- Corrected code errors that
caused Section Translation dashboard recommendations to not appear
and the loading gif to remain indefinitely.
- Based on UX Writer input, "Proposed translation from [MT service]" will be changed to
"Suggested translation from [MT service]" on the Section Translation too
l.
- After successfully publishing the translation contents,
users will no longer see a warning about leaving an in-progress translation
to avoid confusion.
- When the user applies a proposed translation,
the text should be black to allow users to distinguish it
from the untranslated content (gray text).
- Bengali Wikipedia editors participated in
previous research about Section Translation
with positive results, and we want to enable an initial version of the tool in their wiki. This will allow users to experience how the tool works in a realistic environment without the limitations
of the test instance
and provide early feedback.
- Investigated
how easy it would be to add Microsoft Translator API support in cxserver
.
- Users selecting a suggestion to translate may decide to go with a different one instead (e.g., after seeing the sections available to translate).
It is now possible to return to the dashboard
.
- We plan to enable the Section Translation tool in one wiki to learn from its use with real content. Since the tool was designed to select any target language, users may be able to select a different language to publish their translation on. We investigated
what happens when someone selects a different language
to publish in order to avoid problematic situations.
- Corrected when the user is in the "pick a sentence step" and selects a sentence to translate,
clicking on an image no longer causes the browser to navigate away from the page
.
- Fixed bug that
caused translations to not be published
even after the user clicks the publish button.
- Deployed Section Translation on the Bengali Wikipedia
on 22 February 2021!
- Adjusted the threshold for Vietnamese
to prevent publishing when overall unmodified content is higher than 90%.
- Verified that MT is available in production
for Section Translation.
- Enabled
Section Translation on Bengali
Wikipedia.
- As part of the "Show follow-up options after publishing" step of the Section Translation workflow,
users now get an invite to translate another section
when they get confirmation that their most recent translation was published.
- As part of the "Show follow-up options after publishing" step of the Section Translation workflow,
users now get an invite to translate another section as they get confirmation
that their most recent translation was published.
- As part of the "Preview and publish" step of the mobile editor for Section Translation,
users can preview their translation contents
before publishing them.
- As part of the "Pick a sentence" step (T251551) of the Section Translation mobile editor,
users can select sentences that have been already translated to see information
on the translation and an option to edit it.
January 2021
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- After the publication of a
proposal for translatable modules
, we evaluated the implementation efforts required and developed a
plan
.
- Sent recruitment messages and communicated with possible participants to try to
identify additional test users
who match criteria our criteria (general level of experience with CX, language pairs supported by Apertium, openness to testing on mobile).
December 2020
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November 2020
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October 2020
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September 2020
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August 2020
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July 2020
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June 2020
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May 2020
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April 2020
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March 2020
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February 2020
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January 2020
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December 2019
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November 2019
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October 2019
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September 2019
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August 2019
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July 2019
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