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Hi Sarah, > Been doing a bit of research in the list archives to answer a > question for myself and have ended up more confused. Any > help from old hands or current implementers appreciated. > > Looking at how to indicate that a resource is a translation > of another resource, I assumed that isVersionOf / hasVersion > were the appropriate refinements on Relation. > > The current usage guidelines don't appear to be very much in > agreement with this: "The described resource is a version, > edition, or adaptation of the referenced resource. Changes in > version imply substantive changes in content rather than > differences in format." Is a translation a "substantive > change in content"? > > I found some very old emails in the list archive that > indicated that isBasedOn / isBasisFor were once supposed to > be used for translations. > I can't tell if this was ever actually included in > recommended DC, or if it was just an early discussion. > > The complexity is increased by the fact that our system is > structured on IEEE LOM metadata, but we offer crosswalks to > Dublin Core- but the LOM > *does* include the terms isBasedOn / isBasisFor as well as > the Version ones. Not sure if the LOM once upon a time based > its vocabulary on the then-DC vocabulary, or if something > else happened, but I guess its irrelevant now :-) > > Is it the case that isVersionOf / hasVersion are now used to > indicate a translation relationship? I think the answer to that specific question is "no". The dcterms:isVersionOf and dcterms:hasVersion properties do not "indicate" - specifically - a translation relationship. As you suggest, given that DCMI definition which you quote above, there _may_ be an argument that a translation relationship is indeed one of the types of relationship that "falls within" the broader pair of types of relationship represented by the isVersionOf/hasVersion properties (more below). But, even if that is the case, if you want to indicate _specifically_ a hasTranslation/isTranslationOf relationship (rather than that broader relationship types) then you need a different pair of properties. On the question of whether a translation relationship is indeed one of the types of relationship that "falls within" the broader type of relationship represented by the isVersionOf/hasVersion properties, it may be helpful to look at FRBR (though, no, the dcterms:hasVersion/isVersonOf properties weren't, as far as I know, based on FRBR). http://www.ifla.org/VII/s13/frbr/frbr.pdf From 5.3.2 Expression-to-Expression Relationships, page 71: === In these types of relationships, one expression is seen to be a modification of the other. The modification may be a literal translation, in which the intent is to render the intellectual content of the previous expression as accurately as possible (note that free translations are treated in the model as new works); a revision, in which the intent is to alter or update the content of the prior expression, but without changing the content so much that it becomes a new work; an abridgement, in which some content of the previous expression is removed, but the result does not alter the content to the extent that it becomes a new work; or an arrangement of a musical composition. === Given that FRBR regards the intent of "translation" as "to render the intellectual content of the previous expression as accurately as possible" and the DCMI descriptions of dcterms:hasVersion and dcterms:isVersionOf explicitly require "substantive changes in content", then I'd suggest that a translation relationship does _not_ fall within those broader relationship types represented by the dcterms:hasVersion and dcterms:isVersionOf properties, and therefore a different pair of properties is required for the hasTranslation/isTranslationOf cases (and these new properties would not be subproperties of the dcterms:hasVersion and dcterms:isVersionOf properties). That's my interpretation, anyway. But as you say, it really hinges on how you interpret the word "content" in the two cases, and other people may well disagree with my interpretation here. FWIW, in the context of the work on the ePrints DC Application Profile, the project defined a distinct property http://purl.org/eprint/terms/hasTranslation specifically for this purpose. AFAIK, the inverse (isTranslationOf, or something like that) wasn't defined. There are also other RDF vocabularies for FRBR which provide similar properties. See e.g. http://purl.org/vocab/frbr/core# which defines http://purl.org/vocab/frbr/core#translationOf http://purl.org/vocab/frbr/core#translation But N.B. these properties have a Domain/Range of frbr:Expression i.e. their use in a "statement" implies that both the "described resource" and the "value" (in DCAM terms) are both frbr:Expreessions, which may or may not meet your requirements! ;-) Pete --- Pete Johnston Technical Researcher, Eduserv Foundation Web: http://www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation/people/petejohnston/ Weblog: http://efoundations.typepad.com/efoundations/ Email: [log in to unmask] Tel: +44 (0)1225 474323