Re: itemprop="translator"

The pattern that seems be emerging from the work we are in the middle of at the moment goes something like this (assuming translator, translationOfWork, and workTranslation are in place):


  1.  First describe the [translated] work as if it wasn’t a translation
  2.  add as alternateName the the title of the original work (language tags are important)
  3.  author set to the author of original work (preferably URI in an authority e.g.VIAF)
  4.  Translator set to the translator’s identity (preferably URI in an authority e.g.VIAF)
  5.  translationOfWork set to URI of the work this was translated from - care needs to be taken as many translations are actually translations of translations.
  6.  If access is available to the description of a work that has been translated, add a workTranslation URI to link to its translation(s)
  7.  Go drink some more coffee!

As I said I would love to share more details, but the project is not completed, therefore not quite ready to share conclusions yet.

~Richard

On 3 Sep 2014, at 12:15, Mats Blakstad <mats.gbproject@gmail.com<mailto:mats.gbproject@gmail.com>> wrote:

On Mon, 01 Sep 2014 10:01, Jean-Christophe Lavocat wrote:
> Regarding an author/translator, one might want to know which "content" has been written by the person. Is there any official way to do that ?

I guess it will only make sense to add a translator tag (or "translator role") to a text first defined as a translation. Author tag could then be added to any language version of the text and will then be the one that has written the original source text of that translation.

I was not aware about the roles pattern used. To simply add "translator" as a contribution role to the work sounds very logical and would make it easier to manage for webmasters and to keep overview. However, the contribution from a translator to the work is in fact really significant for the person that needs the translation to understand the text. The issue is not about simply having a list of translators to give them attributions to a work, but to be able to display who translated a text together with the specific translation done. It serves an important function: Then if there are confusions in the text, you can actually contact the translator to clear up what you don't understand. The translator understand a language you don't, and you're in fact helpless to understand the original work without the translator.

Maybe knowing the name of the translator would not make you buy a book, but would you buy the book at all if it was only written in a language you didn't understand? I think we can hardly underestimate the importance of the translator.

A good translator understand a lot about the cultural context both of the source language/culture and the target language/culture, so there are many interpretations made for you by the translators that will be transmitted directly to your understanding of the work. To know who made the translation can say a lot about the quality of the translation. Culture and language is really not a 1-1 issue that can be translated word by word and different translators will often give different translations. Then of course the creative contribution from a translator to a translation can differ a lot; in a poem the translator needs to be more poetic and the translator will probably have a stronger voice in the text, in a legal text of course the translator will try to avoid having any voice themselves at all.

On Tue, 02 Sep 2014 01:49, chaals@yandex-team.ru<mailto:chaals@yandex-team.ru> wrote:
> I think the sticking point on translation is about the difference between identifying the thing translated and the translation, or between noting that there *is* a translation without specifying which is the original...

Good point! But should this not be integrated with the way different language versions of a website is declared today? Usually a html document will declare all language versions of itself in the header with a link like this to each language version:
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="LANGUAGE-CODE" href="LINK">
As far as I understand, there is nothing that indicate what is the original content (rel="canonical" only indicate that two different html pages have same content/translation). I guess adding something like itemprop="hasTranslation" or itemprop="translationOf" inside these link tags would help clarify what is the original version, but they would not be very human readable. What will translationOf mean inside the link tag in the header? That the html document is a translation of the link? Or that the link is a translation of the html document?

rel="alternate" in fact already means an alternative version of the document, it can be different language version, but also a version with different style sheet (e.g. for people that need high contrast because of reduced sight). Maybe what we're actually missing is rel="source" or something similar, to indicate what (language) version is the original one?


2014-09-01 8:44 GMT+02:00 Wallis,Richard <Richard.Wallis@oclc.org<mailto:Richard.Wallis@oclc.org>>:
There is not a translator property at the moment, I agree that one would be useful along with translationOf/hasTranslation.

These are on my list for potential proposals from the SchemaBibEx group.

~Richard

On 31 Aug 2014, at 14:44, Mats Blakstad <mats.gbproject@gmail.com<mailto:mats.gbproject@gmail.com>> wrote:

> Does there exist in attribute for translator, like the author attribute?
> If not, would be great to add that!