This week, MediaWiki’s priority messages have been fully translated in 14 more languages by about a dozen translators, after we checked our progress. Most users in those languages now see the interface of Wikimedia wikis entirely translated.

In two months since we updated the list of priority translations, languages 99+ % translated went from 17 to 60. No encouragement was even needed: those 60 languages are “organically” active, translators quickly rushed to use the new tool we gave them. Such regular and committed translators deserve a ton of gratitude!

However, we want to do better. We did something simple: tell MediaWiki users that they can make a difference, even if they don’t know. «With a couple hours’ work or less, you can make sure that nearly all visitors see the wiki interface fully translated.» The results we got in few hours speak for themselves:

This week’s peak of new translator daily registrations was ten times the usual

Many were eager to help: translation activity jumped immediately

Thanks especially to CERminator, David1010, EileenSanda, KartikMistry, Njardarlogar, Pymouss, Ranveig, Servien, StanProg, Sudo77(new), TomášPolonec and Чаховіч Уладзіслаў, who completed priority messages in their languages.

For the curious, the steps to solicit activity were:

• take languages 80–99 % translated (about 60);
• list active users using those languages on Wikimedia wikis (about 600);
• send them a short talk page message (example);
• welcome and thank them!

There is a long tail of users who see talk page messages only after weeks or months, so for most of those 60 languages we hope to get more translations later. It will be harder to reach the other hundreds languages, for which there are only 300 active users in Wikimedia according to interface language preferences: about 100 incubating languages do not have a single known speaker on any wiki!

We will need a lot of creativity and word spreading, but the lesson is simple: show people the difference that their contribution can make for free knowledge; the response will be great. Also, do try to reach the long tail of users and languages: if you do it well, you can communicate effectively to a large audience of silent and seemingly unresponsive users on hundreds Wikimedia projects.

-- Niklas Laxström.