Status: RO

Dear members of the mailing list [log in to unmask],

This mailing list on Dublin Core in Multiple Languages has been quiet
for awhile, but that is about to change.  

Over the past few months, I have seen almost all of you face-to-face at
various conferences and workshops.  A plan has emerged to set up a
distributed registry of DC-Simple in multiple languages.  A few of us
met two weeks ago in Germany to discuss this, and I am writing the
report, which I will soon submit to you all for discussion.

In the meantime, I have responded to two relevant postings that
appeared yesterday on the DC User Guide list (see below).  Watch
this space for a draft report within the next week or so.

Cheers,
Tom

---------------------
Charo, Yves,

Your postings on Dublin Core in French and Spanish are very timely
because there is a Working Group on Dublin Core in Multiple Languages,
it met in Germany on May 25, and I am about to release a draft report
of its conclusions and plans.

Now that the Resource Description Framework Working Group of W3C has
defined a machine-readable way to express metadata schemas and relate
them to each other, we are planning to use RDF to link versions of the
Dublin Core in multiple languages into a distributed registry.  The
likely participants in this first round are versions in English,
French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, the Nordic languages
(Finnish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Swedish, Danish), Thai, and
Indonesian.

Notice that one of these is French
(http://www-rocq.inria.fr/~vercoust/DOCS/DC-french.html); I am not
aware of any versions yet in Spanish.

We consider this to be a time of experimentation and encourage people
to make new versions in various languages -- even if it may result in
there being more than one version for any particular language.  We
expect that some versions eventually will move onto stable servers at
institutions dedicated to maintaining them for the long term.  And the
Dublin Core community may sooner or later develop a system for
submitting these versions to peer review of scientific quality and
institutional commitment, in order to confer on some an official stamp
of approval.

For now, however, we believe it is best not to stifle initiative with
too many obstacles and requirements -- even if we could.  The more
people use and promote DC in multiple languages, the more it will
spread the word and ultimately help us interoperate better at a
semantic level.  I agree with Yves that being multilingual and
multicultural is a great purpose for DC.

Let me know if you would like to join the mailing list
[log in to unmask], which is about to discuss the draft
report that I have almost finished.  This is an inclusive,
consensus-building process, so please feel free to join in.

Cheers,
Tom

Charo Moreno <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>My web-site in Spanish about Dublin Core will be ready in a couple of
>weeks, and before put it on line, I would like to know if someone else has
>had the same great idea of translate the main information into Spanish and
>gives update links in this language.
>Have you met any web in Spanish about Dublin Core, official or not?
>I would also like to know if it is necessary to ask for permission to any
>institution for doing it.
>Thanks in advance, and as soon as I finnish, I let you know just in case
>you want to "hava a look".
>Thanks again.

Crevoisier Yves <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>I had the same idea that Charo Moreno, but in french.
>
>I've begun, but not finished. I have the same question concerning an
>eventual permission of an institution... to diffuse the translation on a
>web-site. =20
>
>I've noticed that french speakers are following the discussions, perhaps
>that they are interested about a french Dublin core, or perhaps that they
>want to participate to the translation, particularly to determinate the
>french terminology.
>
>!We've to be multilingual and multicultural (a great purpose of the DC)!

_______________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Thomas Baker                                      [log in to unmask]
                                                      [log in to unmask]
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