@Michel Plante had raised the question in Slack of whether we are ready to consider multilingual terms wikis, i.e., terms wikis that define the same concept—and the term(s) associated with it—in more than one language.
Michel explained that he is part of a working group in Canada, the CIO Council, that is responsible for publishing standards in Canada.
One of the first standards, Digital Identity, includes a glossary.
In Canada, all official documents must be published in English and French.
Other subgroups of the CIO Council must also create their own glossaries, e.g., Data Governance, Ethical AI.
So Michel is very interested in whether our terms wikis capabilities could include support for multiple languages.
There was a very good discussion in Slack about this topic.
Michel and one other person are proposing that the larger resulting glossary—actually a dictionary—could become a standard in itself. Data Governance, Ethical AI, Digital Identity—all of these could be combined into one larger dictionary effort.
This effort would start by extracting terms published in different identity standards, then identifying what needs to be modified.
The full glossary would become a Canadian national standard.
@Daniel Hardman said that we've always assumed that multi-language support would be a feature—the need to understand how equivalent terms in another languages relate.
@Rieks Joosten agreed with Daniel. Having the technical ability to have support definitions in a different language is relatively straightforward.
However Rieks pointed out that, as a member of the ISO 27000 security standard group, they have had long debates about certain terms (e.g., "risk") that have not reached consensus after years of work.
So his worried that it could be very difficult to get broader consensus on some terms—the Tower of Babel story.
The tools we are creating here are designed to help others understand by what some party means by a term.
However Rieks believes it is worth discussing with the CIO Council what they need.
Michel believed that the terms wiki concept of scopes should address that. They want to have terms that map directly across the two languages. To the extent that different governing parties have different definitions for a term in a different scope, that could work.
@Daniel Hardman noted that his first job out of college was as a professional terminologist. The company he worked for needed to publish manuals in 11 languages. They would pick a term in each language would map across to the same meaning. The intent is to keep the different "labels" for the concept in different languages mapped to the same definition. That is different than having different stakeholder groups define their own meaning for a term.
@Judith Fleenor (Deactivated) clarified her understanding of terms wikis enabling a term to have a different definition in a different scope vs. a single terms wiki having a translation of a term to a different language. In that case, the separate language might be considered just another a terms wiki.
Michel clarified that BOTH capabilities are needed—a term COULD have different definitions AND each one can be defined in two languages.
Rieks clarified that a terms wiki is a place that a terms community can define its own terms and then can produce glossaries that includes those terms PLUS terms from other terms wikis. Therefore different groups could produce different glossaries than show how they use terms.
Daniel clarified that this is indeed how the ToIP Term Tool is designed to work.
ACTION: @Drummond Reed @Rieks Joosten @Daniel Hardman @Michel Plante to prepare an analysis of what modifications to our terms wiki work plan will be necessary to support defining a term in more than one language. Drummond will start a Slack thread to discuss.