Re: altLabels in different langauges

Hi Mark,

Thanks for a very nicely and succinctly worded summary of the issue in your 
previous message.

>A possible way out is to suppose that the rusten/repose pair actually 
>represents a different concept than the serenity/sereniteit pair and 
>create two separate skos:Concepts for them, and assume that pref/altLabels 
>of different languages in one concept are already correct translations of 
>each other.

But if you do this, at least in the context of a thesaurus, then you have 
to start describing concepts that are preferred (included in the thesaurus) 
and concepts that are non-preferred (excluded from the thesaurus for 
reasons of literary warrant, for example, which is probably why you ended 
up lumping all these near synonyms together  as alt-labels for a single 
concept in the first place.) So you are really no further ahead.

I agree with Susan's comment. There are things we should expect SKOS to do 
well (e.g. interoperability with Semantic Web applications), and there are 
things we should not expect SKOS to do (e.g. lossless transfer of 
multilingual thesaurus data as in Paul's case). Wisdom may consist of 
knowing what you want to do and what tools you need to do it.

Best regards,

Ron
-------------------------
Ron Davies
Av. Baden-Powell 1  Bte 2, 1200 Brussels, Belgium
Email:  ron(at)rondavies.be
Tel:    +32 (0)2 770 33 51
GSM:    +32 (0)484 502 393

>[1]http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-esw-thes/2006May/0009
>
>Paul Hermans wrote:
>>Dear,
>>Example:
>><skos:Concept rdf:about="" >
>><skos:prefLabel xml:lang="en">peace</skos:prefLabel>
>><skos:prefLabel xml:lang="nl">rust</skos:prefLabel>
>><skos:altLabel xml:lang="en">repose</skos:altLabel>
>><skos:altLabel xml:lang="en">serenity</skos:altLabel>
>><skos:altLabel xml:lang="nl">rusten</skos:altLabel>
>><skos:altLabel xml:lang="nl">sereniteit</skos:altLabel>
>></skosConcept>
>>Is there a way in SKOS core to indicate that "rusten" is the translation 
>>of "repose" and "sereniteit" of "serenity";
>>that these altLabels belong together?
>>
>>Regards,
>>
>>Paul
>