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How do I change a wiki page content language? In my particular case I want to change the language of the Istanbul page: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=İstanbul&action=info

The page content language is set for English, though the majority of the stuff is in Turkish. So I want to set it to Turkish.

This question is marked "community wiki".

asked 18 Nov '14, 17:00

Wasus's gravatar image

Wasus
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wikified 18 Nov '14, 18:41

iii's gravatar image

iii
4.9k84082


I guess this answer needs an update. Although the information about prefixes is still correct, it is possible to set the page content language now.

To change the content language click the link "Page information" in the menu on the side (either second or third from bottom). The language is shown in the section "Basic Information". You can change the "Page content language" by clicking on the link "change".

This setting is now editable for users, so that "right-to-left" languages will appear with their letters in the correct order without using some complicated wiki templates. Of course, the setting can also be used for languages like Turkish.

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answered 26 Jul '20, 00:19

Tigerfell's gravatar image

Tigerfell
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accept rate: 25%

There is the "move article"-function at the top that allows you to alter the name. I guess in your case you would like to move it to "Tr:Istanbul". Please take care, that you pick an international (here:english) base name for the article.

If you add the text {{languages}} at the source of the article, the page gets an nice translation menu. Further tricks can be found here: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Wiki_Translations

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answered 18 Nov '14, 18:41

iii's gravatar image

iii
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accept rate: 10%

Okay, I did what you said. Though the "Page content language" is still listed as "English (en)". And isn't "Tr" supposed to be all uppercase? Feel free to have a look at it and get it right.

(18 Nov '14, 19:00) Wasus

I don't remember the exact reason, but no it has to be camel case. e.g. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tr:Main_Page

(18 Nov '14, 19:20) iii
1

@Wasus: even at German, which has its own wiki namespace, example the page content language (as reported by MediaWiki is "Englisch (en)". I guess that can only be set per wiki and not per page or namespace (or at least it is not currently). Anyway, why do you worry? Do you want Turkish UI elements of the wiki? Set to Turkish in your user settings.

(18 Nov '14, 21:39) aseerel4c26 ♦
1

@aseerel4c26: Okay, if that's the way it is supposed to be than it is good. Just wanted to make sure everything is set right.

(20 Nov '14, 15:37) Wasus

On That wiki, there's no support for multiple wikis per language. Interlanguage links actually use only prefixes for language codes, using lowercase. But for legacy reasons, 7 languages have been created with dedicated namespaces for their language codes that have been capitalized: DE, ES, FR, IT, JA, NL, RU

For all other languages, there's no dedicated namespaces and the prefixes are lowercased.

However because the initial of the prefix is in fact the initial of the pagename, and that wiki capitalizes the first letter of all pagenames, the first letter of the language code (and only that letter) is capitalized automatically. So you'll use "Tr:" for Turkish (not "tr:", not "TR:").

You'll also use "Zh-hans:" for simplified Chinese, "Zh-hant:" for traditional Chinese, "Pt:" for standard Portuguese, "Pt-br:" for Brasilian Portuguese.

Note that variants of the 7 languages are also using lowercase with first letter uppercased.

The supported language codes can be in those forms:

  • "LL:" (only for the 7 languages above)
  • "Ll:" (e.g. "Tr" for Turkish)
  • "Lll:" (e.g. "Vec" for Venitian): note that some 3-letters prefixes such as "Way:" or "Tag:" are not usable as language codes (they are detected as English; they were not created as MediaWiki namespaces)
  • "Ll-rr:" (e.g. "En-gb:" for British English)
  • "Lll-rr:"
  • "Ll-ssss:" (e.g. "Zh-hans")

where "L" or "l" are place holders for a letter of the main language code, "rr" is a country/region code, "ssss" is a standard script code such as "latn", "cyrl", "hans", "hant".

You should NEVER use any code for English, and not use country/region codes (except in "-rr" suffixes), e.g.

  • don't use "JP" or "Jp" or "jp": use only "JA" for Japanese
  • don't use "GE" or "Ge" or "ge": use only "Ka" for Georgian

Contents for specific countries should not use the namespace-like prefix with colon, but should preferably name the country itself, or use the code elsewhere: those pages will remain translatable and navigatable across languages.

It would have been better if all languages used the same convention for capitalization, but those 7 languages are already detected and managed in the languages navigation bar and lot of templates. The project to use the same lowercase code with a capitalized initial was proposed but never implemented: it would not just require renaming the 7 namespaces but changing many links (and reversing lots of redirects).

So please the convention and avoid creating new unneeded redirects that are hard to fix later when pages need to be moved/renamed: this causes extra maintenance.

Look at the navigation bar: you can unhide the list of languages with missing translations: all red links displayed use the correct capîtalization: follow these red links to create a translated article (after that you may rename your article in your language, but please keep the prefix unchanged.

There's no restriction in BCP47 codes you can use as suffixes (after a colon) for naming OSM tags such as "name", but they follow the standard BCP47 convention (lowercase only for language codes, uppercase for country/region codes in country-specific tags).

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answered 29 Apr '16, 16:30

verdy_p's gravatar image

verdy_p
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Note: my reply above was made in 2016. It was accurate at that time even if recently new functionalities were added.

(26 Jul '20, 11:28) verdy_p
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question asked: 18 Nov '14, 17:00

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last updated: 26 Jul '20, 11:46

NOTICE: help.openstreetmap.org is no longer in use from 1st March 2024. Please use the OpenStreetMap Community Forum