Translation Task Force

borderless
borderless
Part of the Medical Translation Project

Good ledes are articles on health topics which have passed through quality control and are accepted for translation as part of the Medical Translation Project. When a number of criteria are met the article may be accepted in the list of short articles ready for translation. This page explains these standards and which topics are sufficiently important to translate.

  • Version to translate will be copied to the subspace (where additional modifications such as removing pronunciation or English specific info can be done)
e.g. Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Translation task force/RTT/Simple/Cellulitis
Original article available at Cellulitis

Criteria

edit
1000 articles in 100 different languages. (We started out calling us the 100x100 project, but this is too small a goal).

Full translations focus on Good article or Featured article content, where no additional criteria must be fulfilled. To broaden the scope and the amount of articles we have found many languages are most interested in short summaries of topics. This drove the adoption of our goal to translate 1000 articles into 100 languages, also known as the 100 X 1000 Project. Despite decreased length quality standards are very high, and the criteria are similar to the Good article criteria!


A good short article or good lede consists of an English lede that is —

  1. Well-written:
    1. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct; and
    2. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.[1]
  2. Verifiable with no original research:
  3. [2]
    1. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline;[3]
    2. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose);[4] and
    3. it contains no original research.
  4. Broad in its coverage:
    1. it addresses the main aspects of the topic;[5] and
    2. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).
  5. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.
  6. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.
  7. [6]
  8. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
  9. [7]
    1. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content; and
    2. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.[8]

Additional criteria

edit

Articles that are accepted for translation have the potential of being translated into over 100 different languages. This requires them to include a worldwide view on the subject.

In addition the following criteria need also be filled:

  • Lede size (including infoboxes, images and reference table) should not exceed 812kB.

Lede contents:

  • Ledes should include 3 or 4 paragraphs
  • Content is ordered within the lead, the same as the recommended section ordering in the manual of style for medical articles.
    • 1st paragraph is a brief definition and signs/symptoms.
    • 2nd paragraph is cause, mechanism of disease, and diagnosis.
    • 3rd paragraph is prevention and treatment.
    • 4th paragraph is epidemiology, prognosis, society and culture, and history.


  • The lead needs to be written in English that is as simple as possible while the content remains medically correct.

Normally these paragraphs are marked in Wiki-markup with:

<!-- Signs and symptoms -->
<!-- Cause, mechanisms and diagnosis -->
<!-- Prevention and treament -->
<!-- Epidemiology, prognosis, society and culture and history -->

Whether the target Wikipedia chooses to keep these as hidden comments or to use them as independent headers is up to them.

Excluding the non-essential

edit

The final version is moved to a work space on En Wikipedia and typically excludes the following content:

Content
edit
  • Etymology is often not worth translating. The history of a word is seldom relevant when translated. Sometimes the Latin word is the most common term, but even when it is ask yourself – will it be the most common term in Somali?
Templates
edit

Few templates are installed universally. It requires significant effort from us just to make sure templates which give functionality are present. For this reason you should consider if templates is unnecessary.

Each template removed before translation means 100 templates less to remove later on from already translated articles!

Examples of templates to be removed:

  • {{TOC limit}} – normally only used on long articles. If we're only going to be translating the lede there is no point in keeping this template
  • {{IPAc-en}} or {{IPA}} – adds English pronunciation guides, not applicable on non-English Wikipedias
  • {{DEFAULTSORT:}} – Gives limited functionality and since names are translated as well it will only need to be deleted later on
  • Hatnotes such as {{About}} or {{Distinguish}}
  • Subsection notes such as {{Main}} or {{See further}} – if we're translating an article on Diabetes it is unlikely there will be an article on Diabetes management on the target Wikipedia.

*External links templates – Even if external links are included they should be changed from template form into link form. This means adding [] around the link such as [link].Note: Does not include infobox templates

Extra guidelines

edit

Because of the potential these articles have of being translated into many different languages they need to be inclusive of a worldwide view on the subject.

Guidelines/help on how to achieve this can be sought at:

Modifying GA/FAs

edit

Most articles that are at GA or FA will already fulfill these criteria with a few modifications prior to translation. This section reiterates a few points mentioned earlier. Ask yourself:

  • Are there unnecessary templates?
  • Does the article have a world-wide coverage?

If all these apply you can send it through to the review process:

Why good ledes?

edit

The reason behind these criteria are twofold:

  1. Increase the visibility of the project for the English Wikipedia and to allow more English Wikipedians to get involved
  2. Show our quality standards to the communities we are translating for. For content to be accepted we need to show editors working in other languages that we have high standards for any content we translate.


Notes

edit
  1. ^ Compliance with other aspects of the Manual of Style, or the Manual of Style mainpage or subpages of the guides listed, is not required for good articles.
  2. ^ Wikipedia:Reviewing good articles says, "Ideally, a reviewer will have access to all of the source material, and sufficient expertise to verify that the article reflects the content of the sources; this ideal is not often attained. At a bare minimum, check that the sources used are reliable (for example, blogs are not usually reliable sources) and that those you can access support the content of the article (for example, inline citations lead to sources which agree with what the article says) and are not plagiarized (for example, close paraphrasing of source material should only be used where appropriate, with in text attribution if necessary)."
  3. ^ Dead links are considered verifiable only if the link is not a bare url. Using consistent formatting or including every element of the bibliographic material is not required, although, in practice, enough information must be supplied that the reviewer is able to identify the source.
  4. ^ Either parenthetical references or footnotes can be used for in-line citations, but not both in the same article.
  5. ^ This requirement is significantly weaker than the "comprehensiveness" required of featured articles; it allows shorter articles, articles that do not cover every major fact or detail, and overviews of large topics.
  6. ^ Vandalism reversions, proposals to split or merge content, good faith improvements to the page (such as copy editing), and changes based on reviewers' suggestions do not apply. Nominations for articles that are unstable because of non-constructive editing should be placed on hold.
  7. ^ Other media, such as video and sound clips, are also covered by this criterion.
  8. ^ The presence of images is not, in itself, a requirement. However, if images (or other media) with acceptable copyright status are appropriate and readily available, then some such images should be provided.