Template:LangSwitch/doc

This subpage contains documentation, categories, or other content that is not part of the template.
To view the template page itself, see Template:LangSwitch.

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Provides a method to present a string of text selected from an array of many language translations in the language set in the user's preferences or the most appropriate fallback language.

The template automatically sets the following categories: Category:Internationalization templates using LangSwitch

Usage

{{LangSwitch
 |en =
 |xx =
 |default =
}}

Template parameters

 Parameter text is empty

<templatedata>JSON</templatedata> ./. {{TemplateBox}}

TemplateData

TemplateData is a way to store information about template parameters (the description of those and of the whole template) for both humans and machines. It is used by VisualEditor and possibly other tools like Upload Wizard.

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Existing template documentation
At Wikimedia Commons, it is recommended to use {{TemplateBox}} with either ‎useTemplateData=1 or ‎useTemplateData=only on the ‎/doc subpage and transcluding it with {{Documentation}} into the template. ‎<nowiki>-tags can be wrapped around the arguments, if required, to avoid templates being expanded.

Newly created template documentation and imports
Another option, especially for imported templates, or for users with JSON experience, is placing raw ‎<templatedata>-tags into the Wikitext of the template, as described in various Wikipediae.

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Wikipedia's help about TemplateData • Commons-specific information

Provides a method to present a string of text selected from an array of many language translations in the language set in the user's preferences or the most appropriate fallback language.

Template parameters

This template prefers block formatting of parameters.

Parameter		Description	Type	Status
Default Fallback	default	Default text in case one of the "xx" languages is not the language of user's preferences. By default, the English version will be shown, if provided. Default {{{en|}}} (English version)	String	suggested
English	en	Text in English language. Unless ''default'' option is used, this text will also be used if the languages provided do not include the language set in the user's preferences. If you do not want to show any text when the user's language is English, then use "en=~".	String	required
Language Code	lang	Language code (only needs to be provided if the language displayed is to be fixed and independent of the user’s preferences). {{#if:{{{lang|}}}|{{{lang}}}|{{int:Lang}}}} is not necessary. Default Value of {{int:Lang}} (the preferred language of the visitor viewing the page).	String	optional
No Category?	nocat	"nocat=1" will overwrite the default behavior of tracking uses without "en" or "default" options.	String	optional
	xx	Translated text in language ''xx'' (the parameter name ''xx'' can be any supported language code (from BCP 47/ISO 639-1), and you can specify as many such parameters as needed for each translated language). Use "xx=~" if you do not want any message (or default) in some specific language. You can map multiple languages to a single text by using "{{LangSwitch|xx/yy/zz=text}}" which is equivalent to "{{LangSwitch|xx=text|yy=text|zz=text}}" .	String	optional

Additional information

The template is intended to be used in the following namespaces: no namespace specified

The template is intended to be used by the following user groups: all users

Relies on:
Module:Fallback

See also

• {{Autotranslate}} for template internationalization (i18n) mechanism for templates that use named parameters
• {{GetFallback}}, {{Fallback}}, {{Translation table}}
• {{Multilingual link}}
• Category:Internationalization templates using LangSwitch

Localization

This template is not intended to be localized.

Help for choosing the right template for your use case:

I18n templates:	{{Multilingual description|lang= |de,en,default=Deutsch/​English |fr=français |... }}	{{de|Deutsch}} {{en|English}} {{fr|français}} ...	{{LangSwitch|lang= |de,en,default=Deutsch/​English |fr=français |... }}	{{Autotranslate}}	{{tnt}}	Language-aware transclusion
Recommended use at	Categories, galleries	File description pages (deprecated, can be safely replaced by {{Multilingual description}})	Small templates, whenever the previous options are not suitable (removes the visual indication of the language before each translated text)	Data tables with translated cells or larger templates, when used on pages that do not have language subpages (e.g. not having Main page/en, Main page/de) and where the language displayed will be automatically determined by the language set in user preferences	Data tables with translated cells or larger templates, when used on pages that do have language subpages; most of the time these will be pages prepared with the Translate Extension	Data tables with translated cells or larger templates, when used on pages that do have language subpages; the transcluded page needs to be prepared with the Translate Extension, the transcluding page needs to be either prepared with the Translate Extension, or have the page language set by a translation administrator
Requires JavaScript enabled for folding	Yes		No
Folding can be disabled by user	Yes		No
Folding is done server-side	No		Yes
Folding when at least n languages are provided	1 (all translations are shown without folding if the preferred language selected by the user has no matching translation)	4	1
Detection of duplicate, incorrect, or unsupported language codes	Yes	No	Yes	Duplicate language codes are impossible by design. Incorrect or unsupported codes are never displayed, but not reported. The Translate extension's interface (if it's used on the translation subpages) doesn't let the user create translations with invalid codes, but other methods (e.g. entering the translation's URL directly) allow it without any warning.
Allows the same translation to be used for several languages	Yes	No	Yes
Supports language fallbacks	No		Yes		No
Collation order of languages (when not folded)	Consistent order by native language name, languages grouped by script: LTR scripts: Latin, Latin or Cyrillic, Cyrillic, Greek, other simple LTR alphabets (Armenian, Georgian, etc.), abugidas (North Indian, South Indian, other South-East Asian, etc.), syllabaries (European, American, African, Asian), Korean alphabets (basic Jamos, Hangul including some sinograms), Japanese syllabaries (including some sinograms), sinograms (including some syllabaries) RTL scripts: Hebrew, Arabic, other RTL abjads (Divehi, etc.), RTL syllabaries (N'ko)	As provided by the user in the wikitext (any inconsistent order may be difficult to lookup visually)	N/A
Search indexing issues	No (all translations are included on the same page, however search results may be less relevant with many languages mixed)		Yes (may not index all languages depending on search engines, unless there's a list of links for visiting other languages)	Partially (where used; language subpages of templates are indexed)	No (translated pages should include a <languages/> navigation bar for visiting other languages)
Page size issues	Yes (may exhaust size or time limits in the wiki parser if many languages are included; larger pages to download for all visitors; slower navigation for visitors with slow Internet access; may be costly for visitors with limited data plans)		No (only the content for the selected language or a suitable fallback language is present in the generated page)
Contains expensive parser functions	No			Yes, checks for several translations along the fallback chain until finds a suitable	Yes, 2–4 checks per call	No

Examples

Without a default option

Here are a few examples showing template behavior for three languages: English, Italian and Corsu, which defaults to Italian if Corsu text is not available:

Test	Code	lang=en	lang=it	lang=co
No en; default	{{LangSwitch|it=Italian|default=default}}	default	Italian	Italian
No en; no default	{{LangSwitch|it=Italian|co=Corsu}}
en; default	{{LangSwitch|en=English|co=Corsu|default=default}}	English	default	Corsu
en; no default	{{LangSwitch|en=English|co=Corsu}}	English	English	Corsu
en; skip default	{{LangSwitch|en=English|co=Corsu|default=~}}	English		Corsu
en; empty default	{{LangSwitch|en=English|co=Corsu|default=}}	English	English	Corsu
Skip en; default	{{LangSwitch|en=~|it=Italian|default=default}}		Italian	Italian
Skip en; no default	{{LangSwitch|en=~|it=Italian}}		Italian	Italian
Empty en; no default	{{LangSwitch|en=|it=Italian}}		Italian
en; default; skip it	{{LangSwitch|en=English|it=~|co=Corsu|default=default}}	English		Corsu
en; default; empty it	{{LangSwitch|en=English|it=|co=Corsu|default=default}}	English	default	Corsu
en; no default; skip it	{{LangSwitch|en=English|it=~|co=Corsu}}	English		Corsu
Forced "lang=co"	{{LangSwitch|en=English|co=Corsu|default=default|lang=co}}	Corsu	Corsu	Corsu

Example for more

<kbd>LangSwitch|de=Grün|es/it/pt=Verde|fr=Vert|en=Green |lang={{{lang|{{int:lang}}}}}}}</kbd> will give Green for language en

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red	bleu (blue)

This example will translate red when not English, and bleu when not French

Default option

The default option is intended for providing more language independent option. For example:

{{LangSwitch
|de={{Wd|Warschau}}
|en={{W|Warsaw}}
|fr={{Wf|Varsovie}}
|ja={{W日|ワルシャワ}}
|pl={{WP|Warszawa}}
|ru={{Wr|Варшава}}
|default=[[d:Q270]]
}}

will provide link to Wikipedia articles in case one of the languages provided matches user's language but will link to Commons gallery page (Warsaw) if any other language is used. The expression {{W|Q270||d}} is equivalent to the shorter [[d:Q270]] (it just does not show the "d:").

Warning

This template SHOULD NOT be used out of software interface purpose. For example it SHOULD NOT be used to manage multilingual description of the subject of a media or a category or whatsoever.