Commons talk:Language policy

Categories just in English? Proposal: have machine translated cat titles

Commons:Localization starts with Wikimedia Commons is an international and thus multilingual project yet category titles are nearly all in English only with just a tiny sub-0.1% having one or a few redirects in other languages. This policy has Category names should generally be in English, excepting […]. I think what's missing and what would be tremendously impactful are machine translated category titles.

Category titles are generally short and get translated accurately in ~99% of cases. Having machine translated category titles would be hugely beneficial for users and the project because:

• People searching for media or free media online in their own language would more often come across Commons
• It reduces the workload on volunteers translating things by hand via category descriptions albeit just very very few if any users are doing this frequently/extensively where even the large categories linked on the Commons frontpage have no or just very few translation (also this only affects the category description but not the category title and URL; other language redirects like Category:Tiere are just a random occasional barely found thing)
• If more people use and come across Commons, this increases the awareness and number of users and contributors of the project, making all our work, the platform, and free media overall be more useful and impactful
• It would make Commons more multilingual and more accessible to users of varying backgrounds and language skills and located worldwide

I created a wish about this in the Community Wishlist – it's now open for voting: W214: Add machine translated category titles on WMC.
Prototyperspective (talk) 17:40, 23 October 2025 (UTC)