SupportWiki:Translating

Please see the Become a Translator page for details on applying to become a member of our translating community if you do not already have a Steam Support Wiki account.

This guide provides step-by-step instructions (with screenshots) for Steam Support Wiki translators. These instructions apply to all translation teams.

If you have any questions about translating for your language, please consult your Language Coordinator and the other members of your translation team.

Log in to Your Account

Visit the Special:Userlogin page to log in.

Assign Yourself Articles

1. Visit the Translation Assignments page for your language and click edit next to the title of a section which has not been assigned to anyone else:
   
   
2. Update the section title with your username so other users will know who the article is assigned to and save the edit:
   

Translate an Article

Guidelines

• Avoid idiomatic phrases, slang, and regional spelling variations
• Use the formal conjugation of the pronoun "you" when referring to the reader
• Try to mirror the English content as closely as possible in content (there is no need to add extra descriptive content, unless it is missing from the existing English article)
• If there is no explicit translation for a term use the English wording and provide a description of what the term means in parenthesis after the first instance of the term. Example: "... use the Untranslatable (command-line parameter) to set ..."

Translation Procedure

1. Important: Do not edit these tags:
   
   
2. Translate the article's title: (Example from Spanish translations)
   
   
3. Begin adding translated content beneath the {{disclaimer}} tag, above the {{Translate}} tag and the old English content:
   
   
4. Save your progress often. Your Wiki session will expire if you do not save every 15 minutes. You can always return to an article later to finish it.

Wiki Markup

You will see the following Wiki markup code when translating - please observe the following recommendations when translating markup code:

Header - Level One

Code sample:

= Article Title =

Content...

Will produce:

Header - Level Two

Code sample:

== Subheading ==

Content...

Will produce:

Header - Level Three

Code sample:

=== Sub-Subheading ===

Content...

Will produce:

Internal Link

Internal links should contain an English article name (the destination page) with a translated title. The translated title will appear instead of the English article name when the link is properly constructed:

Code sample:

[[Information for New Users:es | información para nuevos usuarios]]

Will produce: (Spanish translation)

External Link

External links have a slightly different format from internal links - only one set of brackets encloses the link, and instead of using a "|" (pipe character), a space separates the destination URL from the translated name for the resource:

Code sample:

[http://forum.empireinteractive.com/ Foros de Empire Interactive]

Will produce: (Spanish translation)

If the destination link does not provide any resources in the language which you are translating, please note this after the link. Example: Foros de Empire Interactive (Inglés solamente)

Bold Text

Code sample:

'''Bold text.'''

Will produce:

Italic Text

Code sample:

''Italic text.''

Will produce:

Translating Category Pages

Category pages contain links to subcategories or individual articles which belong to the category. There may be multiple levels of categories - for example:

* [[:Category:Steam Questions]]
** [[:Category:Policies]]
** [[:Category:Games]]
** [[:Category:Terminology]]
** [[:Category:Steam Components]]

The goal of translating a Category page is to provide the translated article names for each of subcategories or articles linked from the page - the result should look like this:

* [[:Category:Steam Questions | Allgemeine Informationen]]
** [[:Category:Policies | Richtlinien]]
** [[:Category:Games | Spiele]]
** [[:Category:Terminology | Glossar]]
** [[:Category:Steam Components | Steam Struktur]]