Tech:Localizing listing tags and attributes

From Wikitravel Shared

'Moved from en:User_talk:Evan by Andrew to discuss any beef and downsides to localizing listing tags and attributes.

Is it possible to localize the listing attributes or is that still a no-no? -- Andrew H. (Sapphire) 22:46, 11 December 2006 (EST)

I think it's a yes-yes. I wouldn't have spent hours building that feature if I didn't want it to work. Jani had a beef with it, though. We should probably discuss somewhere... like on shared:, maybe. --Evan 23:09, 11 December 2006 (EST)

Which function is this, please (and where is "shared:")? Andy Mabbett 09:17, 12 December 2006 (EST)

"shared:" is our shared repository for images, tech requests, and multilingual coordination. See shared:Main Page for details.

I've pulled together the spec idea on shared:, which is where it should have gone in the first place; it's here: shared:Tech:Automatic area codes in listings. Note that you can log into shared: with your en: user page as an OpenID. --Evan 10:03, 12 December 2006 (EST)

Thank you, I've replied there. Andy Mabbett 13:09, 12 December 2006 (EST)

Actually, I think the feature I was talking about was localization of the names of listing tags. So on the drink tag may be called boire, and the address attribute might be adresse. Andrew is one of the main admins on our German Wikitravel, so he's been planning to localize the tags there. --Evan 10:07, 12 December 2006 (EST)

I have objected and continue to object violently to localizing tags. Excuse my French, but the whole idea is just completely brain-damaged: the tags are meant to be computer-readable, and by "localizing" them for humans you are going to make it a bazillion times harder to write a computer parser. HTML itself is not localized and there's a very good reason why!

What can and should be localized is the entry and representation. A human should never have to read with HTML tags: there should be a nice wizard that pops up to ask for the address or osoite or 住所 or what have you, and then writes out that info as an address tag. If you're going to spend hours on something, spend it on this, which is long overdue. Jpatokal 11:11, 15 December 2006 (EST)

And yet people do read these tags, and there will always be people who read these tags. Wiki markup is both computer- and human-readable. I think you far over-estimate the difficulty of making parsers for these tags; it was not a bazillion times harder making a parser to do the tags as they work now. Many, many strings on MediaWiki sites are localized, and tools that work with MediaWiki know how to get the localized strings. Having ~20 more isn't going to kill anybody. --Evan 21:29, 17 December 2006 (EST)

The listings go beyond Wiki markup and are so intimidating in appearance that people hesitate to work on them: this is why most listingified listings in English stay untouched (and half the rare attempts by newbies to edit them screw up) and why fully templatized ja:'s growth rate is as slow as it is. I think it's imperative that, for all but the most advanced users, they be hidden, and energy wasted on misguided attempts at "localization" would be much better directed to building the GUIs necessary. Go ahead, parse me this:

<見る 名="中原中也記念館" 所在="湯田温泉1-11-21" アクセス="湯田温泉駅から徒歩10分" 電話=なし ウェブ=http://www.chuyakan.jp/　時間="9:00～17:00または18:00(季節による)" 料金="一般310円">中原中也の生家跡にたつ。</見る>

Be sure you can handle half-width ( ) vs. full-width (　) spaces, half-width (=) vs full-width (＝) equals signs, half-width (a) vs. full-width Roman letters (ａ), half-width (1) vs full-width (１) vs Japanese (一) numerals. Even if you can get a parser to do it right, do you really think humans won't make mistakes?

Let me underline once more: I'm all for localizing the interface. That doesn't mean we have to start translating the SQL in the underlying database engine, and it doesn't mean we should translate the HTML listings framework. Jpatokal 23:21, 17 December 2006 (EST)

[edit] Guidelines

So, I'm not sure this is so much a technical issue as a community issue. It's entirely possible to localize listing tags and attributes by editing the right MediaWiki: articles. They're listed in en:Wikitravel:Listings. When Andrew started localizing for German, User:Jpatokal objected. I'd like it if we could finish the discussion here, so that Andrew can continue. My opinion is that it's a good idea to localize the tags and attributes; I wouldn't have bothered writing the code to allow localization if I thought otherwise. Other opinions? --Evan 09:11, 15 December 2006 (EST)

Yeah, I'd like to get a start on this too. A lot of DE's articles are a mess when it comes to MoS and I think listing will greatly help improve that situation. -- Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 09:20, 15 December 2006 (EST)

I don't think it is an issue worth discussion for weeks, because (with the exception of Japanese) its not a big thing to give a computer a list with synonyms so it can work on these lists. It is also not a problem for any (German or other country) Wikitravel user to use e.g. the word "sleep" instead of "schlafen", everyone knows that little English. So it really doesn't matter if we translate the tags or not. It would be logical for me to translate them because things like "IsIn" are already translates ("IstIn" in German).

Currently the English Wikitravel is very confusing, because if You edit a page You can already click on the templates on the bottom, but further information is hard to get.

It would also be great to include a section in this information like "If You don't understand this list-format-thing do not hesitate to write down Your precious piece of information, someone else will come along and bring it in the right form!", so newbies are not deterred. --Flip666 09:02, 1 January 2007 (EST)

[edit] Update

So on de: we decided not to translate the tags and attributes for simplicity. I have, however, translated a few "labels", which have proven to be useful and make up for not translating the tags. I'd appreciate having a few more label options so that we can translate what is readable by humans. Especially for the "fax" option. -- Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 13:09, 24 January 2007 (EST)

[edit] Update2

I suppose this tech request will be rendered irrelevant when we get the new form based listings editor? (Since we can just translate the visual interface for each language version.) --Peter ^Talk 16:50, 25 March 2008 (EDT)