Almost all software developed in the Wikimedia movement is translated using the MediaWiki Translate extension and translatewiki.net online translation platform. I created them as hobby project almost 15 years ago. At the beginning the growth was rapid in terms of content, translators and features. Last time I presented about them in Wikimania was in 2012. After that a period that can be characterized as stagnation started and continued for multiple years. Both Translate and translatewiki.net, as well as the Localisation Update extension, received only a minimal support to keep them working. In the last couple of years it became evident that this is no longer sustainable. The tools and processes have been struggling to meet the increased needs for reliability, usability and functionality.
In this session I want to present both my view of the challenges and threats to continuity as well as latest developments to address those issues. For example, one of the developments is a start of [[betawiki:Succession_plan|succession plan]] for translatewiki.net that documents roles and processes with the aim of lowering the barrier of new people being able to join and help. After the presentation I propose to have a discussion on how to ensure these tools keep working and stay relevant long in the future. Are the challenges identified correctly? Are the proposed solutions appropriate? Which are the most important things to work on?
