I am forwarding this contribution from Diann Rusch-Feja, as she
is traveling and does not have access to the Internet.
Tom Baker
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Diann Rusch-Feja writes:
For the sake of simplicity, I think it would be wise to recommend that the
elements themselves and their qualifiers be kept in English. The guide or
handbook for application of the DC Elements in other language areas could
then give appropriate explanations of the elements with examples in the
language.
The entries in the elements should, however, be multilingual if possible
(for our purposes in Germany - at least for the German Educational Resources
Server - we have recommended that all subject terms be given in both German
and English and if possible all documents as well).
If documents (or document-like objects) are indexed multilingually, even
though the text itself is only available in one language, the question of
precision again arises. Would this necessitate a recommendation for the
language of the entries in the metadata elements? Or recommendation of
combining the LANGUAGE element for searching?
Another aspect: Some search engines will no doubt develop computerized
translation frontends which could work on the basis of concordances -
however accurate they might be - to machine translate the non-English term
into English at the beginning of the search process. A couple of pilot
projects are being carried out to test this sort of thing. There are also
now language-oriented search engines (German Yahoo is just one example)
which are attuned to the linguistic environment and idiosyncracies of the
individual (non-English) language. What effect will this have on the
application of metadata elements?
Dr. Diann Rusch-Feja
Director, Library and Research Documentation
Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Education
Lentzeallee 94
D-14195 Berlin (Germany)
Tel. +49 30-824 06-230
FAX +49 30-824 99 39
email: [log in to unmask]
http://www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de
Library catalog: http://biblio.rz-berlin.mpg.de/mpib/
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