Agenda - May meeting: Multilingual markup?

[John Unsworth]

Alex,

this is a fine topic for the council meeting, and I'll add it to the 
(evolving draft) agenda on my site 
(http://www.iath.virginia.edu/~jmu2m/mirrored/tei-c.agenda.html).  Are 
there documents or examples you'd want council members to look at, if 
possible, before we meet?

John

On Monday, May 12, 2003, at 02:34  PM, Alejandro Bia wrote:

> Dear members,
>
> I have a new issue I'd like to propose to the Council for 
> consideration: TEI multilingual markup.
>
> At the Miguel de Cervantes DL we performed some tests and developed 
> some tools to try the usefulness of using markup of one's own 
> language, but without distancing from the TEI standard.
>
> I'd like to defend the benefits of using multilingual markup schemes, 
> like the reduction of markup times, markup errors, and most noticeably 
> the reduction of learning times due to using markup tags in one's own 
> language.
>
> We have translated TEI element names, attribute names and attribute 
> values (only for defaulted or enumerated values) to Spanish and 
> partially to French. We have also developed an XML translation map, 
> and the parsers and programs to automatically translate markup (this 
> includes XML documents, DTDs and Schemas) from and to the "good old" 
> English TEI. This may allow encoders to tag using mnemonic names in 
> their own language, but easily translate the document to the core TEI 
> standard.
>
> In this way, existent tools like XSLT transforms need not be modified 
> since the document to be processed can be automatically converted to 
> standard English TEI before applying the transform.
> Interchangeability is not affected (in fact it benefits), since both 
> documents and DTD/Schemas can be automatically transformed to any 
> target language (whose translation is provided in the translation > map).
>
> I also see many strategic advantages in the development of 
> multilingual parallel sets of names for TEI, like spreading the use of 
> TEI into non English speaking countries, preventing the need to 
> develop custom-designed vocabularies to solve problems that could be 
> perfectly handled using TEI, and hence favouring the use of standards 
> like TEI, with all the advantages of having institutional and user's 
> support and being able to use existent tools.
>
> In the tests performed at the MCDL, we just solved the problem for 
> Spanish and for "resolved" or "compiled" DTDs without extensions 
> (teixlite like). The little we did with French was just to demonstrate 
> the multi-language capabilities of the solution. The results were 
> promising and the implementation was easier that may be thought.
>
> What I'd like to propose is to tackle the problem within the TEI, and 
> develop a complete solution that includes support for several 
> languages and integration of language choices for DTDs/Schemas 
> generated by the Pizza Chef. The translation and further maintenance 
> of the sets of names in several languages can be done by TEI member 
> institutions of the corresponding languages (e.g. the Cervantes DL 
> could do so for Spanish).
>
> What do you think?
>
> Al the best,
> Alex.-
>
> ----------------------------------------------------
> At 12:19 12/05/2003 -0400, John Unsworth wrote:
>> Folks,
>>
>> I have a detailed draft agenda for the meeting later this week at:
>>
>> http://www.iath.virginia.edu/~jmu2m/mirrored/tei-c.agenda.html
>>
>> or if you prefer tei, at
>>
>> http://www.iath.virginia.edu/~jmu2m/mirrored/tei-c.agenda.xml
>>
>> Please have a look and let me know if you want changes prior to the 
>> meeting (items missing, items that should be removed, more time, less 
>> time, who me? etc.).  As it stands, the following people have 
>> something to do on that agenda:
>>
>> Alex Bia
>> Lou Burnard
>> Matthew Driscoll
>> David Durand
>> Sebastian Rahtz
>> John Unsworth
>> Christian Wittern
>>
>> It would be especially helpful if David Durand and Matthew Driscoll 
>> could recommend in advance specific documents for council members to 
>> read, if doing so would save us time in the meeting.  Christian and 
>> Sebastian have already assigned reading; on the other items, I think 
>> it's probably not necessary or not available.
>>
>> John
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> ALEJANDRO G. BIA-PLATAS
> e-mail: alex.bia at ua.es
>
> Trabajo:
>   Subdirector de Investigacin Informtica
>   Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes
>   Universidad de Alicante (Edificio de Institutos)
>   Apdo. de correos 99, E-03080, Alicante, SPAIN
>   Tel: 34-96-590 9567     Fax: 34-96-590 9477
>   http://cervantesvirtual.com/
>   http://cervantesvirtual.com/research/articles/
>
> Docencia:
>   Departamento de Lenguajes y Sistemas Informticos (DLSI)
>   Universidad de Alicante (Politcnica 4)
>   Apdo. de correos 99, E-03080, Alicante, SPAIN
>   http://www.dlsi.ua.es/
>   abia at dlsi.ua.es
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------
>