To track your translation progress, do the following:
Add your link to the Other Languages section at the bottom of the original article (and it should also exist on all the language versions). It says "Other Languages" in the English. In the other languages, the section is the translated term for "Other Languages". If there isn't an Other Languages section, that means you're likely the first to translate that article! So add an H1 "Other Languages" section title at the bottom of the English article and include your language in there. For example, here's the Wiki Development Portal's "Other Languages" section. Also, please add your link to the other articles that also translate the source article (for example, you translate an English article about how to use TechNet Wiki, and so did three other languages, so you add a link to your article to all four languages). Here is an example of a Portuguese translation that includes a link back to the original English article as well as to the French translation: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/7403.wiki-sobre-o-technet-wiki-pt-br.aspx#Outros_Idiomas
This is an important way to trace the translation, and it will show the root origin from the translated article (as we want the author of the original article to receive the proper credits).
That will help us track it. Here's the tag results.
For example, you can add "Translated into Portuguese" as a tag on every Portuguese article that's translated from another language. Here are examples of tags that have been started by the different language teams: Translated into Portuguese, Translated into German, and Translated into Italian. List your language translation tag here: Wiki: Translation Tags.
Don't forget to include your language tag and title code. As usual, please use your language code in the title. For example, use "(es-ES)" at the end of the title for Spanish. And then likewise add your language's tag. For example, add "es-ES" as the tag in the tag section at the bottom of the article. See the Wiki: Non-English Language Title Guidelines (en-US).
If the original article is in English, select your language from the "Translate this page" drop-down box on the top right side of the article page. The great thing about this machine translation is that it is a moderated wiki of sorts, so it's constantly being improved by the community. Because of that, your translation is of higher quality than most machine translations. Copy your translation, and then paste it into the new article! Then all you have to do is refine the translation! You can even have your team come back in later to help do that. Don't forget to follow the "Track the Translations" section (use translation tags and article section links and use language title codes and tags) above. If you want to update the HTML code directly afterhand don't forget you can clean the HTML code easily with an online tool like HTML tidy.
Similarly to Tip #1, you can press Ctrl + A to select all the text in the article (that's in any language), right-click the selected text, and then click Translate with Bing /strong>((this feature exists in recent versions of Internet Explorer). Then just pick your output language, and copy and paste it into a new article (Google Chrome also has a built-in translator). Then you can just refine the translation.
It's highly advised to doublecheck the result with a second or another tool. Due to the fact that different translation engine might translate small details differently, you can pick the best of the proposed translations.
When you translate an article of another author, you must add credits to the original article with reference to the profile of the original publisher.
For example: "Translated from <...title + link..> (initially published by <..author profile>)", like
Translated from Wiki: How to Translate TechNet Wiki Articles (initially published by Ed Price - MSFT)
Go to the Wiki Home Page (http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/). Browse through the article portals (the blue boxes at the top; they list many Wiki articles on those topics). Translate your favorite articles linked to those portal pages. Then translate the articles linked in the "Help & Feedback" section on the right.
Here they are:
You can find more great articles to translate that are linked on the Getting Started page or listed in Wiki: Governance and Guidelines Portal.
Go through the English articles that have already been translated in at least one language here.
Find out what articles the other languages are translating and pick from those. You can start by seeing what was translated during the Translation Challenge "Round 1" here. Or you can check the Multi-Language tag.
Look through the articles that we previously featured on the Home Page of TechNet Wiki. Find the featured articles here. You might want to translate one of those. Those are some great articles!
Check out the various Overview articles. Find the overview articles here. There's a lot of interest in those!
Browse through all the other languages for ideas. This page acts as a menu for all the non-English languages.
If you write English Wiki articles and you know another language, then translate your own articles first. For example, Luigi Bruno translates most of his English articles into Italian.