Template:Lang2iso/doc

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This is a documentation subpage for Template:Lang2iso (see that page for the template itself).
It contains usage information, categories and other content that is not part of the original template page.

This template, Lang2iso, is transcluded from {{DisplayTranslations}}. It should not be transcluded directly from article namespace.

It takes an English-language language name (such as "Abkhazian" or "Sinhalese") and converts it into a two-letter ISO 639 language code. This table's values are based on List of ISO 639-1 codes. (Some additions to ISO 639-1 codes are identified below.) If the provided language name is not identified, then the default value of "en" is returned.

Examples:

  • {{Lang2iso|German}} returns "de"
  • {{Lang2iso|Greek}} returns "el"
  • {{Lang2iso|Spanish}} returns "es"

Purpose:

Since most users will know a language's name but not its ISO code, this template/macro is meant to facilitate invocations of other templates such as Template:Lang. Thus, instead of recalling (or having to know) that the ISO code for German is "de" and transcluding:

{{lang|de|Mädchen}}

one can type:

{{lang|{{subst:lang2iso|German}}|Mädchen}}

This also reduces the number of parameters that need to be passed to some language routines (such as those similar to Template:langWithName) since the ISO Language Code can now be derived from the ISO Language Name.

Additions to ISO 639-1 Alpha-2 codes:

Further information: List of ISO 639-3 codes

Not all languages have ISO 639-1 codes. Thus, as time goes on, users are encouraged to add ISO 639-2 or ISO 639-3 codes. Thus far, the following additions to ISO 639-1 have been added:

ISO codes

  • "Devanāgarī", "Devanagari", "Devanagiri" and "Devangari" return "deva" (per ISO 15924)
  • "Klingon" and "Klingonese" return "tlh" (per ISO 639-2)
  • "Manipuri" returns "mni" (per ISO 639-2)
  • "Prakrit" returns "pra" (per ISO 639-2)
  • "Simplified Chinese" returns "hans" (per ISO 15924)
  • "Traditional Chinese" returns "hant" (per ISO 15924)

[edit] See also