The first round of the Olympic women’s soccer competition is under way today. Yes, my local listing says “women’s soccer”; of course, the London Olympics web site calls it “women’s football.” This got me thinking about our policy of interoperability and localization in DDC translations. DDC translations are localized representations of the DDC in which the classes remain interoperable with the English-language edition on which the translation is based. Translations are localized with examples and terminology appropriate to the country/language group, and are often supplemented by interoperable expansions (e.g., a deeper representation of a geographic area than found in the English-language full edition).
The DDC 23 class 796.334 Soccer (Association football) offers a simple example of interoperability and localization. In the figures below, figure 1 shows the DDC 23 class in WebDewey (EN), and figure 2 shows the corresponding class in the Swedish/English mixed translation of DDC 23 in WebDewey (SV). In either language implementation, 796.334 represents the same sport in a language-independent fashion; the EN and SV classes are interoperable with one another. Notice, however, how the caption in the SV version has been “localized,” along with the Swedish Relative Index term. Also, some terms from SAO (Svenska ämnesord, the Swedish subject heading system) have been mapped to the class. (The SV version is unique among DDC translations in that it also includes the English-language Relative Index terms associated with each class. This is because the Swedish mixed translation is based on a model in which the category descriptions are expressed in the vernacular to form the basic framework of the translation; classes from the corresponding English-language edition on which the mixed translation is based are ingested directly to complete the hierarchies where needed).
Good luck to all 796.334 teams!
Figure 1. DDC 23 class 796.334 in WebDewey (EN)
Figure 2. DDC 23 class 796.334 in WebDewey (SV)
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