User language

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User language boxes list the languages an editor is comfortable communicating in, and their proficiency. This improves communication across the diverse community, both directly and by helping find interpreters and translators.

You can add user information to your user page by inserting code like this:

{{#babel:ru-N|en-5|fr-1}}

This outputs the boxes you see at right. You can add as many languages as you want, in the form language code-proficiency level.

Language code

The extension recognizes standard ISO 639 (1–3) language codes. You can find your language by searching the list of ISO 639-1 codes.

Proficiency

The proficiency describes how well you can communicate in the language. It's indicated by a single character from the Proficiency column in the table below:

Proficiency	Meaning
0	You don't understand the language at all (or can understand it with considerable difficulty).
1	You can understand written material or simple questions.
2	You can edit simple texts or participate in basic discussions.
3	You can write in this language with some minor errors.
4	You can speak like a native speaker (though it's not your birth language).
5	You have professional proficiency; you understand the nuances of the language well enough to translate advanced documents.
N	You are a native speaker of the language and have a thorough grasp of it, including colloquialisms and idioms.

To remove the header and footer, use plain=1 as the first parameter, e.g. {{#babel:plain=1|sv-N|zh-3|de-1}}. This makes it easier to use with other userboxes.

For example, you can present them horizontally (each box taking a fixed width of 242px, including its tiny 1px margin) within another container box like:

<div class="mw-babel-box-horizontal"><templatestyles src="Template:User language/babel-box-custom.css"/>
{{#babel:plain=1|ru-N|en-GB-5|de-4|nl-3|fr-3|it-2|oc-2|ca-2|es-2|pt-1|tr-0|vi-0|el-0|hy-0|ka-0|bn-0|hi-0|ml-0|ta-0|my-0|th-0|ur-0|ar-0|he-0|ko-0|ja-0|zh-Hans-0|zh-Hant-0}}
<div style="clear:both"></div>
</div>

which gives:

But this requires inserting a custom CSS stylesheet to override the default clear:right (on pages with the LTR direction for the content language) and clear:left (on pages with a RTL direction for the content language) into clear:none. The stylesheet may also resize fonts, and the line-height for specific scripts used in the description, to improve the horizontal alignment of boxes and get a more flexible layout.

• Extension:Babel (the underlying software extension)