WLB/kn

Want to know what the Wikia Language Brigade is all about? You've come to the right place! Here, you can read about what we are and what our history is, as well as what we do and what you can help us with.

What's in a name?
The name, Wikia Language Brigade, is coined by Albugineous and consists of three parts,
 * Wikia – we work Wikia-wide: on our wiki, on your wiki, and everywhere else on Wikia.
 * Language – we translate and correct many existing languages; we cover more than 30 already!
 * Brigade – we are a group, a team: many hands make light work :)

This means we are a team of people who work Wikia-wide to help translate/correct wiki resources and articles in any language, for the improvement of the Wikia community.

In short, this is a voluntary project by our Brigadiers (project members), who translate and correct things on request for other users or wikis. Since this is a wiki, it is also a collaborative project: we can work together on big translations and correct each other's mistakes.

Short history
Yatalu, who has a (unhealthy?) liking for foreign wikis, got the idea to start a translation project on Wikia in late spring of 2013. She began working on its templates in an external sandbox on July 4 and moved them to Community Central the day after, when a project name was found: "Wikia Language Brigade."

Thanks to blogging and other promotion, the number of people joining was high, with 8 members after only 24h. As the project crossed the 10 members mark the next day, the Language Brigade Wiki was also founded on July 7 as a place to store rules and overview the project. Promotion through visiting chats and blogging and growth continued further.

In the last quarter of 2013, the WLB crossed the milestones of 100 "Brigadiers" and native speakers of 25 languages. Both WLB members and volunteers helped to blog in Russian (Ivaristal), German (TheMaven), Catalan (Piece enrik), Chinese (SammyLau), Polish (Pio387) and Italian (TheMaster001).

By the time the Wikia Language Brigade turned one year old, on July 5, 2014, the project covered more than 43 languages and had more than 150 members. Around this same time, the wiki became featured wiki on German Community Central (May 2), received a spot on the main page of Spanish Community Central (July 9) and received a spotlight displaying for the entire English community.

Requesting
You can request translations and language checks. The rules for both can be found on Request policy. The page for translation requests is Translate:Requests, and for correction requests is Correct:Requests. Read the instructions and then click the button to create a new request – it's easy!

It is also possible that a language is very small, which you can check at Category:Brigadiers. If this is the case, you may prefer to ask the translator(s) individually on their message wall.

Joining and connecting
We can always use more members! Joining can be done in a couple of easy steps,
 * 1) Find your language in Category:Brigadiers
 * 2) * Example: English is at Portal:English/brigadiers
 * 3) * If your language isn't there, ask Yatalu to add it.
 * 4) Put your name and info in this page.
 * 5) * More detailed instructions here: Join.
 * 6) * Find your language proficiency here: Babel.
 * 7) Do the above for every language you know.
 * 8) If you want to, put one of our Templates in your profile.
 * 9) Regularly check for new requests!

And let's avoid this common misconception: you do not need to speak multiple languages to join. Bi- or multilinguality is appreciated, but you can still join to correct requests or pages on this wiki, help out with code or other, or just talk to the users here.

Translating and correcting
When you are translating or correcting, remember that your language quality should be at its best: the better you translate/correct, the more it'll improve the community you are helping. Good work also puts not only you in high regards, but also the community you helped, the wiki(s) you represent, the WLB, and even entire Wikia. You may think this sounds too idealistic, but many a little makes a mickle, right?

A few tips for a good translation,
 * Don't accept requests you don't want: others might be more motivated to put effort in a good translation.
 * Grammar and content are more important than literal translations.
 * With intermediate level, it is better to split long sentences up into shorter ones to avoid mistakes.
 * If you're unfamiliar with the topic, ask the requester about words you're not sure of.

Translation requests can be found at Translate:Requests, and correction requests at Correct:Requests. If you want to filter on the English ones only, you can go to Portal:English. Good luck!

Reviewing
You may feel like putting your opinion about the project or about the completion of an individual translation – whether you are happy with the results or not – on the page Guestbook. Anyone can review! From our own members to someone who never heard of us before today: the more, the better!

The rules for reviewing that can be found on Project:Review policy are rather logical: mention what you are reviewing, explain your positive/negative opinions, sign with your username. However, it never hurts to read these rules to be sure.

Recruiting
Want to let others know about this project? Feel free to do so! We always like extra members, but we also like extra requests – without things to do, we would become lazy.

Questions
Do you still have any questions about our project that this page doesn't answer? You've got a few options:
 * Ask them directly to one of our administrators.
 * Pass by Special:Chat to see if anyone there can answer your question.
 * Post a message on Portal:English or another language portal.
 * Check out our forums.

Hope this helps and enjoy your time here :)