Wikipedia:Multilingual coordination

The Wikipedia community is committed to including any and all languages for which there are Wikipedians willing to do the work. We are aware that many of the world's 6,500 languages are not well-represented on computers or the web, and we are committed to working with language speakers and computing organizations to support as many languages as possible.

Each language Wikipedia currently has a separate set of user accounts. Links between articles in different languages are called interlanguage links.

The URL of the wikipedia for a given language is xx.wikipedia.org, where xx is the 2-letter language code as per ISO 639. (On the mailing list and in discussion, people often write xx: to mean the xx-language wikipedia, as in I'm a regular on fr:.)

Encyclopedia projects See also: Wikipedia:Complete list of language wikis available for a full list.

Wiki encyclopedias that are at least somewhat active have been started in various languages:

• Afrikaans (http://af.wikipedia.com/)
• Arabic (Araby) (http://ar.wikipedia.com/)
• Basque (Euskara) (http://eu.wikipedia.com/) - (translation in progress, see m:Azal)
• Bosnian (Bosanski) (http://bs.wikipedia.org/) - started on 12 December 2002
• Catalan (Català) (http://ca.wikipedia.com/)
• Chinese (Hanyu) (http://zh.wikipedia.org/) - started on 2002
• Czech (Český) (http://cs.wikipedia.org/) - started on 3 May 2002
• Danish (Dansk) (http://da.wikipedia.org/) - started on 1 February 2002
• Dutch (Nederlands) (http://nl.wikipedia.org/) - started on 31 August, 2001
• English (/) - started on January 2001
• Esperanto (http://eo.wikipedia.org/) - started on 15 November 2001
• Estonian (Eesti) (http://et.wikipedia.com/) - started on 24 August 2002
• Finnish (Suomi) (http://fi.wikipedia.com/)
• French (Français) (http://fr.wikipedia.org/)
• Frisian (Frysk) (http://fy.wikipedia.com/) - started on September 2, 2002
• German (Deutsch) (http://www.wikipedia.de/)
• Hungarian - (in progress, see Meta:user:grin)
• Interlingua (http://ia.wikipedia.com/) - started on 29 April 2002
• Irish (Gaeilge) (http://ga.wikipedia.com/) - started on 7 June 2003
• Italian (Italiano) (http://it.wikipedia.com/)
• Japanese (Nihongo) (http://ja.wikipedia.org/)
• Korean (Hangukeo) (http://ko.wikipedia.org/)
• Latin (Latina) (http://la.wikipedia.com/) - started on 22 May 2002
• Latvian (Latviešu) (http://lv.wikipedia.com/) - started on June 2003
• Lithuanian (Lietuviškai) (http://lt.wikipedia.com/) - started February 19 2003
• Low Saxon (Nedersächsisch) (http://nds.wikipedia.com/) - started April 27 2003
• Norwegian (Norsk) (http://no.wikipedia.com/)
• Polish (Polska) (http://pl.wikipedia.org/) - started on 26 September 2001
• Portuguese (Português) (http://pt.wikipedia.com/)
• Romana (Romanian) (http://ro.wikipedia.com/)
• Romanica (http://lr.wikipedia.com/) - started on May 13 2003
• Russian (Русский) (http://ru.wikipedia.org/)
• Serbocroatian (Srpskohrvatska) (http://sh.wikipedia.com/) (if someone wants to look after this and/or Serbian (http://sr.wikipedia.com/) and Croatian (http://hr.wikipedia.com/) and sort out what's what, that'd be great)
• Simple English (http://simple.wikipedia.com/)
• Slovenian (Slovensko) (http://sl.wikipedia.com/) - started on 8 March 2002
• Spanish (Castellano) (http://es.wikipedia.org/)
• Stub English - (not set up yet)
• Swedish (Svenska) (http://sv.wikipedia.org/)
• Welsh (Cymraeg) (http://cy.wikipedia.com/) - started on 15 March 2003

Other projects

These are other, non-Bomis, free Wiki-based encyclopedia projects independent of Wikipedia

• Enciclopedia Libre (http://enciclopedia.us.es/) - Spanish (Castellano)
• Susning.nu (http://susning.nu/) - Swedish (Svenska)

Related projects

• Wikipedia Machine Translation Project (http://meta.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia+Machine+Translation+Project)

Starting a new language wikipedia See also: Wikipedia:Create a new language in Wikipedia for a tutorial how to get a Wikipedia in your language running.

A certain amount of "critical mass" is necessary in order for a wiki to "take off". Without 5-10 people eagerly writing and arguing and playing with each other, it wouldn't be as much fun. So we encourage anyone who wants to build a wiki in their own language to also go out and announce/recruit for it. :-)

Statistics See also Wikipedia:Multilingual statistics for a more complete overview.

The 20 largest Wikipedias (June 22, 2003):

1. English (http://en.wikipedia.org/) (134938)
2. German (Deutsch) (http://de.wikipedia.org/) (19281)
3. French (Français) (http://fr.wikipedia.org/) (12003)
4. Polish (Polska) (http://pl.wikipedia.org/) (10981)
5. Swedish (Svenska) (http://sv.wikipedia.org/) (9674)
6. Dutch (Nederlands) (http://nl.wikipedia.org/) (7026)
7. Japanese (Nihongo) (http://ja.wikipedia.org/) (6851)
8. Esperanto (http://eo.wikipedia.org/) (6789)
9. Danish (Dansk) (http://da.wikipedia.org/) (6389)
10. Spanish (Español) (http://es.wikipedia.org/) (4294)
11. Catalan (Català) (http://ca.wikipedia.com/) (2937)
12. Italian (Italiano) (http://it.wikipedia.com/) (2088)
13. Finnish (Suomi) (http://fi.wikipedia.com/) (913)
14. Portuguese (Português) (http://pt.wikipedia.com/) (885)
15. Interlingua (http://ia.wikipedia.com/) (659)
16. Latin (Latina) (http://la.wikipedia.com/) (597)
17. Czech (Česká) (http://cs.wikipedia.org/) (500)
18. Norwegian (Norsk) (http://no.wikipedia.com/) (494)
19. Estonian (Eesti) (http://et.wikipedia.com/) (437)
20. Low Saxon (Nedersassisch) (http://za.wikipedia.com/) (250)

For an overview of the world's biggest wiki websites (Wikipedia or not), see MeatBall:BiggestWiki

Policy issues

Some questions you might ask

what can I do to help ?

• please consult Wikipedia Embassy
• consider joining Intlwiki-L, the international mailing list
• just jump through interlanguage links

I have just noticed the fact that the top and bottom bars are in English. Can something be done about that?

• Those lines come from a configuration file that the public can't access (I believe). Please see the embassy for the ongoing effort to translate Wikipedia into different languages.

Here are some "international Wikipedia" policy questions. To a certain extent, these questions will resolve themselves, though.

• How are the various Wikipedias going to be coordinated, if at all? Will we have several quite different articles in different languages? Will English be a lingua franca?
  • In the embassy we are coordinating efforts between languages.
• What are some suggestions about what can be put on new language Wikipedia home pages?
  • See /Homepages to discuss.

• Is there going to be an easy way to link from one language to another?
  • Yes, Interlanguage links are now available for all wikis that are upgraded to our Phase III software.
• Anything else?