| Language templates |
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| Language names (ISO 639) |
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| Interwiki links |
| Foreign-language text |
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| Other |
Usage
This template is intended primarily for:
- Articles with a high quantity of non-English text that has not been marked up with any language templates or codes.
- Articles with unidentified non-English text.
This includes:
- Foreign languages written using the Latin alphabet
- Foreign languages written using non-Latin alphabet scripts
- International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcriptions
- Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) text
The addition of language templates on Wikipedia improves Wikipedia's accessibility. In adding language templates, visually-impaired readers who utilise screenreader technology will be able to hear words pronounced in the correct language, instead of them being pronounced phonetically in English.
Place ((Cleanup lang|article|date=April 2024)) on articles where non-English text is used, but has not been marked up.
If a section in an article does not use any language templates, place ((Cleanup lang|section|date=April 2024)) there.
If you know the ISO language code for the non-English text that needs formatting, you can add this to the cleanup template under the parameter |iso=. The ISO code should be present in the infobox of the language's article; for example, Latin is la, and Manx language is gv.
The basic language templates used on Wikipedia are:
- ((lang)) for foreign languages in their native script – this may be Latin alphabet or non-Latin alphabet text
- ((transliteration)) for foreign languages transliterated into the Latin alphabet – i.e., the romanisations of foreign-language words not ordinarily written in the Latin alphabet
- ((IPA)) for IPA transcriptions
- ((PIE)) for Proto-Indo-European language content
Wikipedia also has a number of language-specific multilingual support templates, such as ((nihongo)) and ((lang-zh)), which feature parameters specific to those languages, such as parameters for different transliteration styles.
This cleanup template automatically adds articles to Category:Pages with non-English text lacking appropriate markup, or a dated subcategory thereof.
When not to use
- If there is not much foreign-language content that needs marking up within an article; instead of a cleanup tag: if you know the language of the text, just add the appropriate language template to this text with the correct code.
- For the names of people and places: though the
|italic=parameter exists in both ((lang)) and ((transliteration)), and can be set to |italic=no, it is unnecessary to add language templates for the names of people and places. - For loanwords to English: language templates are intended to improve Wikipedia's accessibility, but common loanwords to English are pronounced just fine by screenreaders. If you are unsure if something is a loanword, searching for it on the Merriam-Webster online dictionary should tell you whether it is a loanword to English or not; if it has an entry, it is likely to be a loanword.