RDF Translations

To use the PACBook stylesheets to translate an XML document, you need to tell PACBook where the translations for that document are. You do this by adding translation metadata to the document.

Where to Add Translation Metadata

Translation metadata takes the form of RDF triples. You add it to the metadata section of the XML document. So, for a DocBook 5.0 document, you add it to the info element at the start of the document. For an SVG document, you add it to the metadata element at the start of the document.

How to Write It

Typical translation metadata for a DocBook document looks like this:

<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
         xmlns:bibo="http://purl.org/ontology/bibo/"
         xmlns:vivo="http://vivoweb.org/ontology/core#"
    <bibo:Document rdf:about="">
        <vivo:hasTranslation xml:base="http://DBK/Topics/512_Series/xlate/">
            <rdf:Alt>
                <rdf:li xml:lang="de" rdf:resource="ac_de.xliff"/>
                <rdf:li xml:lang="es" rdf:resource="ac_es.xliff"/>
                <rdf:li xml:lang="fr" rdf:resource="ac_fr.xliff"/>
                <rdf:li xml:lang="nb" rdf:resource="ac_nb.xliff"/>
                <rdf:li xml:lang="nl" rdf:resource="ac_nl.xliff"/>
                <rdf:li xml:lang="sv" rdf:resource="ac_sv.xliff"/>
                <rdf:li xml:lang="zh" rdf:resource="ac_zh.xliff"/>
            </rdf:Alt>
        </vivo:hasTranslation>
        <!-- Other RDF properties ... -->
    </bibo:Document>
</rdf:RDF>

In this example:

The bibo:Document element declares that this file is a document and that it is the subject of the translation metadata. You could (but don’t have to) use bibo:Image instead of bibo:Document in translation metadata that applies to an SVG file.
The vivo:hasTranslation element declares that this document has translations associated with it. The optional xml:base attribute can be used to indicate where all the translations are.
The translations are indicated by rdf:li elements all wrapped within the rdf:Alt element. For each translation, the xml:lang attribute represents the language; the rdf:resource attribute shows the name of the XLIFF file which contains the translation in that language. The rdf:resource attribute may contain an absolute or relative URI; if relative, it is combined with the xml:base attribute of the vivo:hasTranslation element to define the full URI.
Note that you need to declare the rdf, bibo and vivo namespaces.

Translation Metadata for Part of a Document

Different parts of a document might store their translations in different XLIFF files. To specify translation metadata for part of a file, you add it to the metadata section for that part. So, to specify translation metadata that only applies to a particular chapter in a DocBook file, you would add the translation metadata to the info element at the start of the chapter. This would override any translation metadata at the start of the book.

You could (but don’t have to) use bibo:DocumentPart instead of bibo:Document in translation metadata that only applies to part of a document.

To work out which XLIFF file to use when translating a particular element, the PACBook stylesheets look for the nearest ancestor element which has a child element which contains translation metadata as described above.