Re: Multiligual Credentials

Hi Benjamin,

That’s correct. An Open Badge could have related achievements within the credentialSubject with each one containing the language code in “inLanguage” and the content duplicated in the language specified by the code. And as you said, the VCDM approach results in only one achievement with content available in different languages.

+1 for text direction. I don’t think Open Badges has that, but I could double check on it.

I think it would be helpful in this thread to explore the pros and cons of each approach. For the time being, we have both. Maybe an exploration could result in an alignment or at least a doc that can inform developers of the differences.

Thanks,

K.

From: Benjamin Young <byoung@digitalbazaar.com>
Date: Friday, November 22, 2024 at 3:03 PM
To: Kerri Lemoie <klemoie@mit.edu>
Cc: public-vc-edu@w3.org <public-vc-edu@w3.org>, public-credentials@w3.org <public-credentials@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Multiligual Credentials
Doesn't the `inLanguage` approach (per Nate's example) mean that an individual has essentially been given two (albeit "related") Acheivements? One in English (which is apparently the primary one) and a related Achievement in Italian? The VCDM approach--while perhaps "awkward" or at least different for some with its use of arrays and objects--does mean that your data model would result in only one Achievement being given with its contents available in multiple languages.

I don't know how important that is to EDU related implementers, but the modeling does seem off a bit...

Regardless, you may also want to consider adding text direction as a property which can be important to some languages and renderers.

There's also a great read from the I18N group at the W3C called "Developing Localizable Manifests" https://www.w3.org/TR/localizable-manifests/#indicating It covers the pros and cons of most known (or at least existing) approaches for JSON. However, it does not cover "multilingual strings"...which is another can of worms entirely. :)

Cheers,
Benjamin

On Fri, Nov 22, 2024 at 1:13 PM Kerri Lemoie <klemoie@mit.edu<mailto:klemoie@mit.edu>> wrote:
Hello All,

At the November 18, VC-EDU call, we discussed approaches to multilingual credentials (transcription and audio available through this tool: https://w3c-ccg.github.io/meetings/scribe-tool/).

I believe this is an important topic especially for education related credentials.

I’d like to kick-off a discussion on this thread and consider a follow-up discussion at VC-EDU again and/or CCG soon. Together we can consider pragmatic approaches that will help to make the credentials as useable and understandable as possible.

Primarily we discussed two ways that I’m aware of that we could issue credentials in multiple languages.

W3C VCDM approach: https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-data-model-2.0/#example-example-dual-language-credential


The angle of this approach is to provide translations within the properties themselves.

1EdTech Open Badges 3.0 & Comprehensive Learner Record V2: https://gist.github.com/ottonomy/12bd1e1f5510d3f49d966b1991f1e6c8 (draft gist provided by Nate Otto – thanks)

This approach specifies creating related achievements that could be in different languages using:

  *   related (https://www.imsglobal.org/spec/ob/v3p0#org.1edtech.ob.v3p0.related.class)
  *   with a languageCode: (https://www.imsglobal.org/spec/ob/v3p0#org.1edtech.ob.v3p0.derived.languagecode.class)

It’s worth noting this approach has been used by the 1EdTech specs prior to the more current versions that are aligned to VCs and that they could be open to changing this in a subsequent version.

Also worth noting that the current Open Badges 3.0 and CLR v2 (presumably since they are very similar) schemas will not allow for the VCDM method because the properties where you would likely apply this are expected to be strings versus arrays or objects. So, any software verifying against the schemas will return an error if say, both the VCDM and the 1EdTech angles to multilingual credentials are used simultaneously.

Would love to hear from you about it.

Best,

K.


---
Kerri Lemoie, PhD
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