ConRunnerAdmin at 00:17, 7 July 2005

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'''Interlanguage links''' are links from an article in one Wikipedia language to the same subject in another Wikipedia language, [[Wiktionary:Wiktionary:Interlanguage links|between language versions of Wiktionary]], and the same within [[Wikiquote]] and [[Wikibooks]].

The interlanguage link feature works also on [[Wikimedia Commons|Commons]], and produces links to the Wikipedias. This is not reciprocal: a link from a Wikipedia to Commons is an in-page link.

They appear at one or two edges of the webpage (in Monobook on the left, in Classic at the top and bottom) after ''Other languages:'', and show the names of languages for which a link is available. Interlanguage links look like [[Wikipedia:External links|external links]] (or different, depending on CSS), but the syntax is more like internal links. They are a form of [[m:Help:Interwiki linking|interwiki link]]s. See [[m:Meta:Interlanguage links]] for details on linking different languages on Meta.

==Syntax==
The interlanguage [[Wikipedia:Links|links]] take the following form:

:<tt><nowiki>[[language code:Title]]</nowiki></tt>

where the language code is the 2-letter code as per [[ISO 639]]. (See [[m:Complete list of language Wikipedias available|Complete list of language Wikipedias available]]. English is "en", German is "de", etc.) So for example in the article on [[Esperanto]], which is available on a lot of other wikis, the interlanguage links would look like so:

:<tt><nowiki>[[de:Esperanto]] [[en:Esperanto]] [[es:Esperanto]] [[eo:Esperanto]] [[fr:Espéranto]] [[nl:Esperanto]] [[ja:エスペラント]] [[pl:Esperanto]] [[ro:Esperanto]] [[simple:Esperanto]]</nowiki></tt>

These links are treated specially, and don't show up in the body of the text, but in a special <strike>header</strike> <strike>footer</strike> sidebar section "Other languages:" listed by language name. They can go anywhere in the article source; they used to be placed at the top, '''however this was somewhat problematic — it added excess whitespace to the top, was confusing for newbie editors, and the links often showed up in search results where one would have preferred to see body text. For this reason, it is required to put the language links at the bottom of the page, after external links, see also's, and [[Wikipedia:Category|categories]].''' Placement does not alter the visual appearance of the links on the rendered page except for the order.

(You should not include the link to the language you're writing in.)

==Specific languages==
In the past the Chinese Wikipedia had two versions of many articles written in Simplified and Traditional script. Nowadays the conversion between the scripts is made automatically, so there is no need for linking script-specific versions of articles. Please take a few moments to read [[Wikipedia:Chinese interlanguage links]] to avoid unnecessary extra work.

For a few other Wikipedia languages, there are lists of pages where links may be needed. For example, the English article may have a Spanish link, but the corresponding Spanish article might be missing a link to English. Lists to work on include:
*[[/Dutch]]
*[[/Esperanto]]
*[[/French]]
*[[/German]]
*[[/Polish]]
*[[/Spanish]]

For more information on working with other language Wikipedias, see [[Wikipedia:Embassy]] and [[Wikipedia:Multilingual coordination]].

==Tips==
*If you also work on a Wikipedia in another language, you might want to keep track of new pages there and check for English articles on the same subjects, so you can add a link there from here.
*If you create a link to a Wikipedia that also has the interlanguage links available, please create a back-link in the other direction as well. It would also be good to copy any other interlanguage links on the two pages.

==Inline interlanguage links==
*Interlanguage links in [[Wikipedia:talk page|talk page]]s and on [[Wikipedia:Meta|Meta]] will appear inline in the text, like regular links, so you can cite other pages in discussion.
*In normal articles, an inline link can be made by prefixing an extra colon - e.g. <nowiki>[[:nl:Hond]]</nowiki> produces [[:nl:Hond]]. This method should be used for linking to an article in another language which is not the ''corresponding'' article.
*An inline link to a Wiktionary entry, normally <nowiki>[[wikt:Juice|Juice]]</nowiki>, can be directed to another language's Wiktionary like so: <nowiki>[[wikt:fr:Jus|Jus]]</nowiki>.

==Interwiki links==
*Note that the syntax for interlanguage links differs slightly from that for linking to pages on other wikis, this concept being called '''[[InterWiki]]''' link.
*The full interwiki prefixes that can be used from many wikis are ''':en''' (Example: '''<nowiki>[[:en:InterWiki]]</nowiki>''' (formerly <nowiki>[[WikiPedia:InterWiki]]</nowiki>) to directly link to the English version and ''MetaWikiPedia'' (note the capitals!).
*Within Wikimedia you can also use "m" instead of MetaWikiPedia, and wiktionary and wikibooks (not wikiquote or wikisource).

''See also: [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style (sister projects)]], [[ISO 639|list of language codes]]''

==Links to pages that do not exist==
Links to pages on another wiki (including other [[Wikimedia]] sites) have a different color than links within the English Wikipedia. Unlike internal links, these links do not indicate whether the target page exists or not. If the target page does not exist, the link will take you to a blank page that has no content. This shows that an article about the subject is needed, but has not been written yet.

If you find blank interlanguage links on the English Wikipedia, they may be deleted as having no content or you can comment them out. It is strongly recommended that you create at least a [[Wikipedia:Perfect stub article|stub]] page before adding interlanguage links to it. Later, interested people can translate the rest of the page content from the original language to the new one for which the link was made.

Note: if the language prefix is wrong it is considered part of the name of a page on the same wiki. Such an error is clear from how the link looks: as an internal link to a page that does or does not exist.

==Notes==
*Use the regular external link syntax (see [[Wikipedia:How to edit a page]]) in the following cases:
**linking from languages for which the feature is not yet available;
**if you want to specify a text in the link in addition to the language, for example if the subjects of the articles do not quite correspond.

Depending on your browser, you may not be able to simply cut-n-paste the text of article names into the Latin1-based wikis (English) from non-Latin1 wikis (Japanese, Esperanto, Polish, etc). In that case, you can copy the %XX hex codes from the URL, or use some external program to convert the Unicode text into numeric HTML entities (see [[Wikipedia:Scripts#Unicode numeric converter scripts]]). Some web browsers (in particular newer versions of Internet Explorer) automatically convert cut-and-pasted Unicode into numeric HTML entities; this is not official HTML standard, and you will have to check by hand whether your browser does this or not.

Examples:

*<tt><nowiki>[[eo:E&#365;ropa Unio]]</nowiki></tt> or <tt><nowiki>[[eo:E%C5%ADropa Unio]]</nowiki></tt> (Esperanto [http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/E%C5%ADropa_Unio Eŭropa Unio]; also X-system backwards compatibility, eg <tt><nowiki>[[eo:Euxropa Unio]]</nowiki></tt>)

*<tt><nowiki>[[pl:Wojna ameryka&#324;sko-meksyka&#324;ska]]</nowiki></tt> or <tt><nowiki>[[pl:Wojna ameryka%C5%84sko-meksyka%C5%84ska]]</nowiki></tt> (Polish [http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wojna_ameryka%C5%84sko-meksyka%C5%84ska Wojna amerykańsko-meksykańska]; (also backwards compatibility with Latin-2: <tt><nowiki>[[pl:Wojna ameryka%F1sko-meksyka%F1ska]]</nowiki></tt>)

*<tt><nowiki>[[ja:</nowiki>&#19990;&#30028;&#12398;&#22269;<nowiki>]]</nowiki></tt> or <tt><nowiki>[[ja:%E4%B8%96%E7%95%8C%E3%81%AE%E5%9B%BD]]</nowiki></tt> (Japanese [http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B8%96%E7%95%8C%E3%81%AE%E5%9B%BD 世界の国]; Unicode only)

If at some point this system becomes difficult to manage, a tool will be set up for conveniently updating the link sets between wikis to keep things consistent.

==See also==
*[[Wikipedia:Interwikimedia link]]
*[[Wiktionary:Wiktionary:Interlanguage links|Wiktionary:Interlanguage links]].
*[[meta:Help:Interwiki linking]]
*[http://vs.aka-online.de/cgi-bin/globalwpsearch.pl?search=Wikipedia&timeout=30&minor=1 This very useful tool for doing interwikis]
*[http://www.flacus.de/wikipedia/Wiki/index.html Find Interlink between identical written works.]
[[Category:Wikipedia style and how-to|{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Wikipedia multilingual coordination|{{PAGENAME}}]]

[[zh-min-nan:Wikipedia:Gú-giân liân-kiat]]
[[bg:Уикипедия:Междуики]]
[[cs:Nápověda:Mezijazykové odkazy]]
[[da:Wikipedia:Hvordan laver jeg henvisninger til andre sprog]]
[[de:Wikipedia:Internationalisierung]]
[[el:Βικιπαίδεια:Διαγλωσσικές συνδέσεις]]
[[es:Wikipedia:Enlace interlingüístico]]
[[eo:Vikipedio:Interlingva ligilo]]
[[fr:Wikipédia:Liens interlangues]]
[[hu:Seg%C3%ADts%C3%A9g:Nyelvk%C3%B6zi_linkek]]
[[ko:위키백과:인터위키언어링크]]
[[ja:Wikipedia:言語間リンク]]
[[pl:Wikipedia:Linki do stron w innych Wikipediach]]
[[pt:Wikipedia:Ligações interlinguísticas]]
[[ru:Википедия:Интервики]]
[[sl:Wikipedija:Povezave na druge jezike]]
[[sr:Википедија:Како постављамо интервики линкове]]
[[fi:Wikipedia:Kieltenväliset linkit]]
[[sv:Wikipedia:Språklänkar]]
[[th:วิกิีพีเดีย:ลิงก์ข้ามภาษา]]
[[zh:Help:%E8%B7%A8%E8%AF%AD%E8%A8%80%E9%93%BE%E6%8E%A5]]

ConRunner:Interlanguage links - Revision history

ConRunnerAdmin at 00:17, 7 July 2005