RE: [dita-comment] dita-translation comment

["JoAnn Hackos" <joann.hackos@comtech-serv.com>]

Hi Bryce,
I think you are presenting a case that was not intended by <glossentry>.
It was not designed to function as a terminology database. There are
much better tools for that. It seems, however, that you could
"translate" each <glossentry> into multiple languages. As a group, they
would represent your terminology across your languages.

I'm forwarding you note to Kara Warburton at IBM who wrote the feature
description for the Glossary Specialization. Perhaps she can give you
more insight than I can.

Regards,
JoAnn

JoAnn Hackos PhD
Chair
DITA Translation SC
joann.hackos@comtech-serv.com
Skype joannhackos
 
 

 


-----Original Message-----
From: Bryce L Nordgren [mailto:bnordgren@fs.fed.us] 
Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2009 4:00 PM
To: dita-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [dita-comment] dita-translation comment 

I was on the verge of recommending DITA to a colleague who is working on
a 
Russian-English Fire Science Dictionary.  However, after digging a
little 
deeper, I am a bit confused as to how one might even use the glossentry 
element to provide a kind of structured translation framework. 

We can start simply: with only a single <glossterm> element allowed in a

<glossentry>, how does one specify the "preferred term" in two or more 
languages?  If <glossentry> means "one sense of the term", should it 
contain the definition of that sense in all the relevant languages?  My 
read of the MultilingualBestPractices draft suggests not.  So there must

be some sort of way to link definitions...

I have read the Glossary Specialization white paper, but I am still at a

loss as to how to specify the equivalent translated entry.  I can easily

see using a <glossSynonym xml:lang="ru" href="ru_term_def.dita"/>, but 
such a usage certainly is not mentioned in the "best practices" white 
paper (draft) promulgated by the translation subcommittee.  It also 
violates the semantics of <glossSynonym>, as the synonym is semantically

defined as a non-separately-defined child of the preferred term rather 
than in its own topic...Finally, @href is not defined on <glossSynonym>
in 
the current draft of DITA 1.2.

Ideally, we'd really want a structure like a reltable to relate
preferred 
terms from different languages.  She pretty much had a terminology 
reltable in her powerpoint slides.  Even the three English speaking 
countries she considered (Canada, USA, Australia) exhibited varying 
degrees of agreement as to what a term meant, which terms were
synonymous, 
and which terms lacked a counterpart in the foreign language.  We'd love

to host this and see more terms and more languages be added, and a 
reltable like structure would greatly ease our maintainence needs.

Perhaps a multilingual example is called for in the Glossary 
specialization white paper? 

Thanks, 
Bryce

-- 
This publicly archived list offers a means to provide input to the
OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) TC.

In order to verify user consent to the Feedback License terms and
to minimize spam in the list archive, subscription is required
before posting.

Subscribe: dita-comment-subscribe@lists.oasis-open.org
Unsubscribe: dita-comment-unsubscribe@lists.oasis-open.org
List help: dita-comment-help@lists.oasis-open.org
List archive: http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita-comment/
Feedback License: http://www.oasis-open.org/who/ipr/feedback_license.pdf
List Guidelines: http://www.oasis-open.org/maillists/guidelines.php
Committee:
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=dita