Language-specific elements
The standard metalex distribution only supports language-specific elements for Dutch and Hungarian at the moment. We invite native speakers of other languages with some background in legal theory to submit proposals for element names in other languages. Submit proposals to metalex@leibnizcenter.org or the mailing list.
Whether your proposal is accepted depends on your credibility as a translator, and the size of the language group you are submitting a proposal for. We prefer submissions from groups of people. If you submit a translation for a language spoken by just a few million people, it is not unlikely that nobody in the metalex community knows anyone who speaks that language to evaluate the proposal. In this case your proposal is accepted by default. Proposals for English, Germans, French, Spanish, Russian, and Italian will be evaluated.
In this document we explain briefly how the mechanism works, and what the requirements for language-specific element sets are.
The language mechanism is attached to the modular version of the metalex schema. For each module (Ref, Std, and Dec) there is an associated substitutionGroup for the language of choice. The language mechanism cannot be used in combination with the monolithic schema file (metalex.xsd). The reason is that the same element can have the same name in multiple languages. In the case of Dutch and Hungarian this only happens with the Index element (which is index in both languages).
Technically this is not strictly a problem, but it is likely to lead to situations where you get an error because the same name occurs in a validation context twice. We want to avoid that situation, in particular because it may not be easy to diagnose the problem in all XML-aware tools.
The image below pictures the options you have when using metalex.
Generic functionality of metalex (for instance the transformations) only works on the generic element set. If a transformation (to for instance XHTML) is applied, then the document must first be transformed into the generic element set. In addition to the language-specific substitutionGroups, there should be a transformation from that language to generic metalex. A transformation the other way around is also a nice feature.
If you want to create a language-specific vocabulary for your native language, consider the following principles:
- Language and jurisdiction are different things. Do not choose words that have a specific meaning in your country, but are interpreted differently in another one that uses the same language.
- By using words that have a specific meaning in legal language in your country, you create expectations about their use in the standard. Metalex does not check for constraints that may be considered obvious in your country. Try to choose neutral terms.
- Metalex categorizes legal sources, and parts of legal sources, in its own way. Try to capture the conceptual distinctions made by Metalex in the words you choose. We are perfectly aware that terms like IndexDesignation feel very artificial.
Note that there is no substitutionGroup for English at the moment. The generic vocabulary is based on English, but it might as well have been Latin. It is possible to submit proposals for an English substitutionGroup for Metalex.