RDFTM survey comments

Dear Steve, Fabio, Lars, Nicola, Valentina, et all,

 

Sorry for late comments, I tried to send this email several times during
past two months, but could not subscribe to the list from my gmail account
(and my new born baby did not let me get bored, so I was not very
insistent). 

(I cc topicmail, just in case. If this message still does not post to SWBP
list, I would appreciate if somebody could forward it)

 

Anyway, I am very impressed with the thorough analysis of the "prior art",
but confused regarding a few things. Firstly - the selection of papers. For
example, authors reviewed my early research (2001) while the latter approach
(2002 - more interesting from some perspectives, which is why I worked on it
and actually published it) is only quoted [Ogievetsky 02] in the
"references" section but not considered otherwise.

 

Also I am a bit confused regarding the purpose of this work: Is
interoperability being sought on syntax level, data model level, semantic
level, etc.? Even English and Russian languages (those that I somewhat know)
are not fully interoperable. There are limitless examples when roundtrips
lead to larger and different text when translators try to express idioms of
one language with idioms understandable to speakers of other languages.
Imagine Shakespeare translated by Boris Pasternak to Russian and then by
Walt Whitman back to English. How close will it be to the original? And, if
(surprise, surprise) the roundtrip result is different from original - does
it mean that translators did a poor job? (Also, if translators are trying to
preserve all nuances of the source, - do you expect roundtrip to be more
verbose or less verbose?)

Topic Maps and RDF authoring is a creative work even if one uses some ready
to use generic TM/RDF software that claims to do
anything-one-could-ever-ask-for. (And translation as well - is creative)
Thinking otherwise is similar to the idea of communism in one separate
country.

(By the way, [Ogievetsky 02] represents the least verbose XTM to RDF
translation of all generic translations considered in the survey - IMHO, of
course)

 

I doubt that even a simpler task of translating a topic map expressed in one
vocabulary to a topic map in another vocabulary will ever be "perfect" in
the sense that authors of the survey imply. (Same apply to RDF documents
with different ontology/schemas behind). Syntax level merging is fine, data
model level is arguable, semantic - that is where the real problem hides.
PSI may partially mitigate it but only in the part which is most obvious.
Creative authors will violate any fixed set of PSI, unless restricted by
totalitarian rules). 

 

Having said all this, I still think that research in this direction is very
important at least because it helps reveal important issues related to
knowledge sharing and interchange.

 

Hope that everybody is doing well.

Best Regards,

 

--Nikita

917-406-8734