BelieveTheSign:Language Policy
This page describes the current multi-lingual policy of BelieveTheSign. BelieveTheSign is a set of encyclopedic pages about William Branham in English with the capacity to translate into four other languages. High-level articles in BelieveTheSign should be translated into these four languages while low-level articles need only include machine-translation code. The following are guidelines for creating articles in multiple languages.
Organization
Unlike Wikipedia BelieveTheSign is not comprised of distinct language encyclopedias that contain discrete bits of information. Instead, the BelieveTheSign seeks to present the same content in multiple languages.
There is, however, a balancing act that must be addressed when confronting language issues. It comes down to human-translation, which is accurate but time consuming, vs. machine-translation, which is fairly inaccurate but labor-efficient. BelieveTheSign has struck a balance between these two methods of translation which has provided the best possible solution for language management. Human-translation is organized under a system of root pages and sub pages which allows BelieveTheSign to consolidate every translation of a particular article under one root name. Machine-translation is structured to provide translation for any page in which Google Translate code is included.
Creating New High-Level Pages in Different Languages
High-level pages are highly accessed pages that are hubs for direction to other pages. These pages include the main page, country pages, family tree pages etc. They are considered high-level pages because they rarely constitute the end result of a search and are critical to finding other information. If these pages were to be haphazardly changed, they could potentially “orphan” other articles that are linked to them, meaning viewers couldn't find the article through a succession of link clicks.
English Root Articles
On high level pages, the English article is considered to be the "root article." This means that the English article must be created before any other languages for that same article can be created. In order to ensure that language templates on BelieveTheSign work correctly, all root articles should be written in English. Creating an English root article is as easy as creating a new article.
When creating another language variant of the article, a slightly different process must be utilized.
Creating Articles in Languages Other Than English
If you wish to write an article in a language other than English, first create the root article and then use the appropriate language code to create the article in the language of your choice. For example, if you want to create an article about the Iglesia Evangélica Menonita de Guatemala in Spanish, first create the English root page. On that page insert the following "stub" template, to alert future editors to the fact that the English version is incomplete. Next, create a new page for the Spanish translation by attaching the Spanish language code (/es) to the root page title. For example if you used the "Iglesia Evangélica Menonita de Guatemala" format to create the root page you will use "Iglesia Evangélica Menonita de Guatemala/es" to create the Spanish translation page. (To create links for the same article in other languages use the following format; French: "Iglesia Evangélica Menonita de Guatemala/fr", German: "Iglesia Evangélica Menonita de Guatemala/de". Regardless of the fact that root articles are written in English, root article names are written in the native language of the specific congregation or group (In other words, the title for the Iglesia Evangélica Menonita de Guatemala article is "Iglesia Evangélica Menonita de Guatemala," not "Guatemalan Evangelical Mennonite Church"). To learn more about language codes, see the language code section below.
Organizing Articles in Different Languages
When you start a new article, create new pages for several different translations. For instance, when you create a French version of an article about Ethiopia (Ethiopia/fr) also create Spanish and German translations (Ethiopia/es and Ethiopia/de). On these new pages attach the article stub template that corresponds to the appropriate languages. For example, use the "stub" template on the root English page and the "stub/fr" template on the French page. By inserting the stub template you will alert future editors to the fact that these versions of an article are incomplete. To learn more about different stub templates read the stub article.
At the top of each different article translation insert the "Languages" template. This will create links to every other translation that exists for a given article.
Please note - when translating pages you need to change any categories to include the appropriate language code. For example, if you translate a page from English to French (fr) and the page contains the "Category:Policy|Language policy" tag, you need to replace it with "Category:Policy/fr|Language policy". Therefore, category pages will be separated by language. For example, the "Paraguay" category will contain every English article that falls under the "Paraguay" category, while the "Paraguay/es" category will contain the Spanish translations of those same articles.
Creating New Low-Level Pages in Different Languages
Low level pages are articles that don’t have as high a risk to “orphan” other pages. If they are vandalized or haphazardly edited, very few pages will be affected and the damage can be contained. Low level pages usually include congregation pages, sources and stories. Unlike the relatively static high level pages, low level pages are pages that will continue to be created the longer the site is online.
Low-level pages are machine-translated by Google Translate. Therefore, every time a new low-level page is created, the appropriate code needs to be added. This has been taken care of in an easy-to-use format when creating new articles. When first creating a page, there is a box that says "Select Boilerplate" above the editing pane with a drop-down menu of languages. All that has to be done is select the language the article will be written in and the code for translating the article will be added to the editing pane. Its as easy as that. Simply add the content for the article below the generated line of code.
Language Codes
Throughout BelieveTheSign you should use the language codes specified by the MediaWiki software when creating language-specific content (see Names.php for the full and up-to-date list).
Following are the requisite language codes:
- English /en
- Portuguese: /pt
- French: /fr
- German: /de
- Spanish: /es
Miscellaneous
If you do not like seeing the group name in English at the head of the page, the name can be removed by inserting the following code at the top of the page: double-underline + NOTITLE + double-underline.