ExportForTranslation extension for MediaWiki

This extension exports articles as text files to pass to external translators. It uses an internal list of pre-configured header translations as well as the table provided by the TranslationManager extension to translate links and headers; this saves on repeat work and helps maintain consistency.

Both TranslationManager and ExportForTranslation are single-language for now, intended for translating Kol-Zchut from Hebrew to Arabic.

Usage

The extension adds a user group, translator, with the user right export-for-translation. Users in this group have an additional link in their user tools, which allows exporting an article.

The export results in a download of a plaintext file, where links are replaced with their translation (if available through language links or TranslationManager). There is also an additional template added, {{נתוני תרגום}}, with the following parameters:

• שם (name)
• שם מתורגם (translated name)
• תאריך עדכון מקור (source last updated)
• rev_id

On our system, this template creates and shows a diff link between the exported revision and the current revision; you can adapt it to your needs, and use it to save semantic information, for example.

This template can be found in the wikitemplates subdirectory.

Special:ExportForTranslation

It is also possible to export pages using Special:ExportForTranslation, either by selecting a page there, or passing a page name as a subpage, e.g.: Special:ExportForTranslation/My_Page_Name.

Configuration

The extension comes with these configuration options which can be set in LocalSettings.php:

// Define which namespaces should include the "Export for translation" button
$wgExportForTranslationNamespaces = [ 0, 4 ]; // Main and Project namespaces

// Default target language for translation exports - ISO 639-1 language code
$wgExportForTranslationDefaultLanguage = 'ar'; // Arabic

Translation Headers

The extension uses a JSON file at MediaWiki:ExportForTranslationHeaders.json to manage headers translation mappings. The file follows this structure:

{
  "Header1": {
    "he": "Original header in Hebrew",
    "ar": "Translated header in Arabic",
    "en": "Translated header in English"
  },
  "Header2": {
    "he": "Another header in Hebrew",
    "ar": "Another header in Arabic",
    "en": "Another header in English"
  }
}

Dependencies

This extension has a hard dependency on TranslationManager.

Changelog

0.5.0, 2025-02-25

• Change the storage for Header translations to a JSON file, MediaWiki:ExportForTranslationHeaders.json

0.4.0, 2023-01-12

• Multilingual support, matching extension:TranslationManager v0.8.0

0.3.0, 2021-06-08

• Breaking change: ExportForTranslation:export() now expects a Title.
• ExportForTranslation:export() can now also be passed a revision ID, to export a specific revision.
• The exported text now holds a template of metadata, which was previously encoded as an HTML comment.

0.2.2, 2021-02-28

• bugfix: the page's own translation was missing because of recent changes

0.2.1, 2021-02-25

• Do not fall back to title translation for the categories, as it introduces inconsistencies

0.2.0, 2021-02-24

• Refactor to only pull suggestions and language links for the actual links on page, not every page and suggestion in TranslationManager
• Ignore double spaces inside links, because apparently MediaWiki ignores them
• Handle links that include a fragment [[Example#Heading2]]
• If a category doesn't have a language link, fall back to title translations (after this refactor, it will only work if the same title is available on page)

0.1.0, unknown date

Todo

• API module