Interlanguage links

Interlanguage links or ILLs are small navigational aides that connect the current article to the same topic in another language.

ILL at the top — You can find ILLs at the **top** of pages, just to the upper right of the "Edit" button.

ILLs are also at the bottom of article pages. Note that languages are given their native names, not their name in your language.

For the reader's convenience, they are found in the same places on every wiki in the Fandom network—at the bottom and top of the page. That way, if you're reading the English article on Star Trek's Uhura, you know where to look for the link to the Spanish version.

Setup

Interlanguage links are not created by default. They have to be requested and added after wiki creation. This is because there can be duplicate communities in the same language, making the choice of language partner occasionally problematic. Ideally, both sides of the link need to agree to the partnership. For this reason, and others, some communities have established rules about whom they'll link to. Before putting in a formal link request, it's always a good idea to talk to the leaders of the community to whom you wish to link.

Once you've figured out that you're a good fit, make a formal request at the Interlanguage link requests page on Community Central.

After the links are set up, it might take up to 24 hours for the links to work, for caching reasons.

Usage

Interlanguage links cannot be added or edited with the VisualEditor. Instead, you must use source editor. Since ILLs are nothing but wikitext, and their emplacement is largely an exercise in simple cutting-and-pasting, source mode is highly recommended. The instructions below assume you're in source mode.

General form

ILLs are created like this:

[[language code:article name]]

For example, the following creates a link to 首頁:

[[zh:首頁]]

Most of the time, it's necessary to get and spell correctly the name of the article in the _target language. This means you'll end up with a block of differently-named links, like this:

[[ca:Ajuda:Enllaços interlingüístics]]
[[de:Hilfe:Interlanguage-Links]]
[[es:Ayuda:Enlaces interlingüísticos]]
[[fi:Ohje:Kieltenväliset linkit]]

Using with PAGENAME

In some cases, you can save yourself some keystrokes by combining the magic word {{PAGENAME}} with an ILL. For instance, imagine that you're at the article Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart at the English Doctor Who wiki. That's a long name. But it also happens to be the title of the article at the Spanish and Italian Doctor Who wikis. So you can express the ILLs like this:

[[it:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[es:{{PAGENAME}}]]

Be careful, though. Just because the article is the same name in some languages doesn't mean that it's the same in all languages. For instance, Supergirl isn't always "Supergirl", so you have to remember to specify the correct article name where necessary:

[[nl:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[es:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[fr:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[hu:Kara_Zor-El_(Új_Föld)]]

Main pages

If you're on your wiki's main page, you can also save yourself quite a few keystrokes. Deep within the core of the MediaWiki software that underpins Fandom, main pages all have the same name. So this'll do just fine:

[[ca:]]
[[de:]]
[[es:]]
[[fi:]]

Placement

Interlanguage links example — A typical ILL list, seen here in source editor at the bottom of the page, *after* the final section of the article.

Though an ILL may be placed anywhere on a page and still work, they are most commonly placed at the bottom of the page. Some wikis might even have rules which require that the ILLs be at the bottom of the page, so be sure to ask around before starting to publish a lot of ILLs.

Inline usage

To make an inline ILL—that is, one that appears in the body of your article's text rather than the ILL section of the page, put a colon before the language code. For example:

[[:es:Ayuda:Enlaces interlingüísticos]]

It will look like this when the page is saved: es:Ayuda:Enlaces interlingüísticos.

Other wikis

To link to a different wiki in a different language, type the link as follows:

[[:w:c:[WIKI]:[LANGUAGE CODE]:[PAGE NAME]]].

For example: w:c:community:es:Ayuda:Enlaces interlingüísticos leads to the page at the Spanish Community Central about interlanguage links. Be sure to add in accents, diacritic marks and other typography marks that might not exist in the wiki's home language!

It is quite similar to linking to other wikis' languages: see wikipedia:cy:Cymru - it links the Welsh Wikipedia page on Wales, listed in the _target language.

SEO impact

Taking the time to add ILLs doesn't just benefit the current readers of a page. It also helps establish the legitimacy of the topic with search engines. Place ILLs on a page and your wiki's SEO rank on that topic will likely improve.

Further help and feedback

Browse and search other help pages at Help:Contents
Check Fandom Community Central for sources of further help and support
Check Contacting Fandom for how to report any errors or unclear steps in this article

Help:Interlanguage links

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