Multilingual Linked Open Data Patterns

Soft Inter-language links

Description

Use a soft property to state that two resources are inter-language linked.

Context

owl:sameAs is a very strong property with logical implications and hence must be used careful. Two resources linked by owl:sameAs are supposed to be really the same and reasoners that infer something about one of the resources, will automatically infer the same for the other.

A soft link can be either a custom property (DBPedia uses, for example, dbo:wikiPageInterLanguageLink) or a common property such as rdfs:seeAlso, skos:related, etc.

Example

The example using identity links could be written as follows: 

<http://hy.example.org#Հայաստան> 
  rdfs:seeAlso
    <http://en.example.org#Armenia> .

Discussion

Soft links are weaker regarding semantic implications than an owl:sameAs link.

Using custom properties like dbo:wikiPageInterLanguageLink can provide more freedom but are usually not well recognized by automated software agents.

Thus, the use of more common properties with similar semantics (i.e. rdfs:seeAlso, skos:related, etc) should be considered.

See also

[Halpin 10] describes the uses and abuses of owl:sameAs and propose to limit its use.

The new version ITS 2.0 contains categories that are format neutral, supporting both XML, HTML and the RDF based NIF (NLP Interchange Format). It also gives support to localization workflows like those expressed in XLIFF.