Re: Localization of RDF property names? Seeking advice.

Peter,

On 17 Dec 2006, at 13:40, Peter Krantz wrote:
> We are using RDF to make statements about documents in an information
> domain where it is difficult to translate concepts to english (some do
> not have a corresponding english word). Should we try to translate
> these concepts to english or leave them as they are (and remove
> accented characters)?

There are two distinct issues here. First, what URIs to use for your  
concepts? Second, what rdfs:label to use for the concepts?

The second one is the smaller problem, you can use literals with  
language tag to attach multilingual labels to concepts, and all  
Unicode characters are allowed. So, provide labels in all languages  
that users of your application are likely to need.

The first question, what URIs to use, is harder. You should keep in  
mind though that end users should normally not see the URIs, that's  
what the labels are for. So, in theory you could avoid the problem  
and use URIs like http://my-namespace/123 instead of http://my- 
namespace/difficult-to-translate-concept. But that would be hard on  
the people who work with the URIs directly -- ontology engineers,  
software developers, and the like. Using mnemonic URIs is of course  
much more convenient for them.

So I guess you should ask yourself if everyone who is likely to work  
directly with the RDF is able to understand the untranslated concept  
names. If the answer is yes, then I think using the original language  
in the URIs is a good solution.

Richard


>
> Is there anyone else that has had the same question and what was  
> your approach?
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Peter
>
>

Received on Sunday, 17 December 2006 19:35:09 UTC