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Metadata Watch Report #5

[ contents | section 1 | section 2 | section 3 | section 5 ]

Section 4 - Multilinguality

A second trend that can be observed is that multilingual issues as not yet on the list of highest priorities in the metadata arena.

When we look at the information and specifications produced by the leading metadata activities, we see that almost all of that is in English only. The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative attempts to provide translations of its main standard in many languages:

30 translations of the Core element set are available through the DCMI Web site.

During the third SCHEMAS Workshop (Budapest, May 2001) it was suggested that the Dublin Core set is a relatively simple case as far as translation of the specifications is concerned, because it has only 15 core elements and the semantics are only loosely defined. When it comes to more complex metadata element sets, such as the set that is being developed in the context of the Digital Object Identifier, there are more problems translating elements names and semantics that are very precise and highly culturally dependent, for example in relation to national legislation. In those cases, a "mapping" between language/culture-specific versions may be required.

It may be expected that the gradual rise in importance of non-English communities and resources on the Internet will have an effect on many metadata communities, and that at least some of them will start providing information in multiple languages. However, it is not clear that a translation of standards specification in itself is worth the effort. In the first place, translations are bound to introduce slight differences with the original text (a phenomenon sometimes referred to as semantic drift).

In the second place, the existence of many translations introduces a serious problem of maintenance: any change in the standard needs the involvement of many people in a very short timeframe to avoid translations to be different from the base standard. For the implementer community, the emphasis should be on implementation guidelines and best-practice examples in local languages to explain the proper use of a standard metadata set in a specific cultural and linguistic context.

[ contents | section 1 | section 2 | section 3 | section 5 ]

Maintained by: UK Office for Library and Information Networking (UKOLN)
Last updated: 01 October 2001