Re: [OWL-Guide] Errata in Rec

> you are right, wines should not be listed.
> (although we should say wineries instead of winerys)
> 
    [...]
    
> >It should read: "This set includes all *Winerys*, Regions, etc."
> >
>                                                                          
>             ^^^^^
>                                                                          
>             Wineries

Deborah,

Indeed :-)

However, I would like to point out a somehow related issue, that is the
use of plural forms when dealing with property or element names of the
language, or even with arbitrary class names.

For example, consider the following sentence found in first paragraph of
section 4 of OWL Overview
<http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-features-20040210/#s4>:

    [...]
Furthermore, OWL DL requires that properties are either ObjectProperties
or DatatypeProperties: DatatypeProperties are relations between
instances of classes and RDF literals and XML Schema datatypes, while
ObjectProperties are relations between instances of two classes.
    [...]

A native English speaker will probably take "ObjectProperties" (or
"DatatypeProperties"), meaning obviously "several occurrences of
properties of type DatatypeProperty". But other natural language may
have different plural forms and rules, or conventions (at least in
Western languages).

When translating, one would normally take into account these differences
and "adapt" the original wording as to match the target language
conventions. Generally, in order to obviate any ambiguity, it ends up in
the sentence being more explicit. 

So, for example, the sentence above would become something like:

"Futhermore, OWL DL requires that properties are either of type
ObjectProperty or DatatypeProperty: properties of type DatatypeProperty
are relations ..."

The same applies to arbitrary class names.

In either case, a problem lies in the fact that the plural forms of
these class names often don't match those in definitions. For example,
there are "Wines" in the text , but there is <owl:Class rdf:ID='Wine'>
in the definition. And, due to markup, both terms appear in the same
monospaced font, adding to the confusion.

Though this topic is probably better suited in w3c-translators, it may
also be of interest here.

hih,

JJS

Received on Tuesday, 23 March 2004 07:24:04 UTC