Template talk:Rough translation

Mod to apply to sections?
Is there a way to adapt this template to refer to sections or will I have to use a different template? --Tedd-the-Tiger (talk) 12:24, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

French
Does anyone know what the French version of this template is called? Sirkumsize 08:43, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Language
This needs to be rephrased. Right now, it's set up to say the same name of the language in English as what's listed under other languages. It should be changed to either output the name of the language as truly shown in the Other Languages box or to not say it the way it does now. For example, if something is a rough translation from German, the output is: German Cookiecaper 00:45, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

(changed the above to a link so that this page is not placed into the rough translation category -- Kjkolb 08:53, 2 July 2006 (UTC))

Explanation
Some explanation regarding the usage of this template would be good (what are variables 1 and 2 supposed to be?). --Abdull 13:44, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Please be judicious in use of Template:No-rough
There is a new template, , that was created 3 September 2011. While use of is appropriate when an editor has merely dumped a machine-translation into Wikipedia, please examine the article in question to make sure that it is of unacceptable quality before posting the  to the user's talk page. There are many legitimate uses for, & an editor should not be scolded for merely using this template appropriately. Mahalo! Peaceray (talk) 20:27, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Languages list?
Documentation of parameter 2 refers to a list of languages, but doesn't make clear what list. Could a link be provided, please? --Stfg (talk) 17:29, 9 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I've expanded the example with more details to make this point clear. —capmo (talk) 03:50, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Date parameter
Could someone please add a date parameter to this template? My attempt to do so was not successful. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 01:47, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

About the listed parameter
I added the listed parameter to the rough translation template at Church of the Holy Mother of God, Kuršumlija but the PNT section still isn't showing up. Did I do something wrong? —Largo Plazo (talk) 13:43, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I finally looked closely enough to realize it wasn't just not being displayed, it didn't exist anywhere in the code. I've added it. —Largo Plazo (talk) 13:29, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

The message
translator without dual proficiency

Could this be refined-as it really doesn't make a lot of sense. -- Clem Rutter (talk) 23:11, 6 July 2014 (UTC)


 * What about "by a translator not fully [/sufficiently] proficient in English", or "by a translator lacking English proficiency"? —capmo (talk) 04:12, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Sounds a bit too harsh
I think the wording of this template is very harsh, if not insulting, and may deter valuable editors from contributing. There was a proposal to merge it with Template:Cleanup_translation, but it failed on a technicality. I am considering proposing the same thing. Any thoughts? Rentier (talk) 12:50, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Doesn't work well on drafts
This template appears on Draft:Franziska Meissner-Diemer, with The original article is under "Deutsch" in the "languages" sidebar wording. The problem is, for a draft, the wikidata link doesn't exist, so there isn't actually any Deutsch entry in the sidebar. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:22, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
 * , yes, it should check for Draft space and not emit that wording in that case. You could issue a edit request for it. Mathglot (talk) 20:36, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

Checking the language names
Please see Template talk:Cleanup translation for a discussion of a proposed parameter change which may affect this article as well. Mathglot (talk) 20:37, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

"Machine translation is worse than nothing"
WP:MACHINETRANSLATION says that "Wikipedia consensus is that an unedited machine translation, left as a Wikipedia article, is worse than nothing.", which was news to me. Should this template reflect that with an "or consider removing it", linking to that essay? --Lord Belbury (talk) 15:59, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * If a translation is awful, I don't think the reason it's awful makes any difference when considering what to do with it, whether it's because it was a machine translation or because a human with a poor grasp of the source or target language produced it. Largoplazo (talk) 19:13, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * , I actually make a slight distinction between equally bad human, or machine translations. A bad machine translation can be worse than nothing, because a machine translation can be recreated by any user at any time with a few keystrokes. In fact, the more time goes on, the more likely it is that a new machine translation will be better than something pasted into the article back when machine translation wasn't as good as it is now. There's no button you can click to make a bad human translation better, however. I agree with that there's no effective distinction in what the result should be in either case: improve it, tag it, or even just remove it entirely, reducing the article to a stub consisting of a single, defining sentence, and two or three references. Mathglot (talk) 00:47, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Bug in language param handling
Param 1 is the language parameter, and takes a full language name, like German, or Spanish. Because other language-related templates use the ISO 639 language code such as or  instead of name, there is an undocumented convenience feature in this template which permits the use of either the language name or the language code in param 1, for those who can't remember which one to use. However, there is a bug which appears in very rare cases where the full name of one language matches the language code of a different language. The only case where this has occurred so far to my knowledge, is at Bayinnaung's Bell Inscription which was a translation from Mon language, and so the canonical transclusion at that article using the full language name should be this:

However, that generates the wrong banner, naming 'Mongolian' instead of 'Mon', because mon happens to be the language code for 'Mongolian'. The bug is that the code currently checks first for language code, and then for language name, and it should do it the other way round. For right now, the workaround is to use the language code for Mon, i.e. . I don't believe there are any other examples of this bug, but one could search the list of Wikipedia language names for ones that are only two or three characters long, to see if they match the ISO code for some other language. For example, 'Ido', 'Lao', 'Twi' and 'Wu' are short language names, but there is no second language that use those as an iso code, so the bug cannot occur in those cases. 'Mon' may be the only case where the bug can occur. For another way to do it, see Needtrans, which works with 'Mon' or 'Mnw'. Mathglot (talk) 03:33, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Courtesy pinging, due to this edit. Mathglot (talk) 04:44, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
 * If we do it the other way around then any usages that use mon for the the code will be broken. There is no real fix here and since this is a very rare case, just use the language code. Gonnym (talk) 08:31, 9 July 2022 (UTC)