[DDI-users] Reuse issue with question in multiple languages and resulting variable

[Wackerow, Joachim]

There seems to be an issue with the reuse of category schemes for multiple languages. Maybe somebody has run into the same issue and has a solution or good workaround.

For a study across countries a question is translated into multiple languages. The specific language version of the question should have its own identity because there is the requirement that the translated question can be versioned (i.e. the translation can change). This applies to the question text and to the categories of the response domain. All the translated questions are comparable and should result in one variable.

There should be only one resulting variable for all countries where the translated question versions have been asked. This variable should have the description, the variable label, and the related category labels in multiple languages (can be realized by xml:lang). All the multi-lingual information is basically merged from sources (questions) in multiple languages into one information object (variable) with sub-items in multiple languages.

There are two technical issues:
A category cannot reference a description or label in another location.
Labels and descriptions have no identity, only the related parent item. Therefore they cannot be referenced directly for reuse.

The category scheme with the merged multi-lingual category labels has to be created as a new one; no references to the existing category labels in the language-specific category schemes are possible.

Possible workaround: CategoryMap in Comparison could be used to indicate the similar semantics of categories in different languages. A system could extract on this basis the related category labels (semantically similar) and generate a category with labels in different languages. The origin of information can be indicated by achieved by BasedOnObject.

Another option would be to use a variable for each language. These variables can make reuse of the language-specific category schemes. The merged variable could be based on these variables. But this doesn't solve the issue.

Attached is a diagram illustrating this use case (categories and codes are not included for simplicity reasons).
Notes on this: There is for example a "German" CodeList. Languages don't really make sense regarding code lists, but this CodeList references the German CategoryScheme. Reuse of a common CodeList (CL1) is possible.

There seems to be a general issue in multi-lingual context with all text components which are related to questionnaires (doesn't apply to other items).

Any comments appreciated.

Achim


--
GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences
Department: Monitoring Society and Social Change
Team: Social Science Metadata Standards
Visiting address: B2 1, 68159 Mannheim, Germany
Postal address: P.O. Box 122155, 68072 Mannheim, Germany
Phone: +49 (0)621 1246 262
Fax: +49 (0)621 1246 100
E-mail: joachim.wackerow at gesis.org
www.gesis.org

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