[jats-list] Ambiguous language tagging in BITS 2.0

Subject: [jats-list] Ambiguous language tagging in BITS 2.0
From: "Kraetke, Martin, le-tex martin.kraetke@xxxxxxxxx" <jats-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2023 12:24:43 -0000
Hi there,

I stumbled upon an issue with language tagging in BITS 2.0. There exist multiple elements which don't allow language tagging.

(1) For example a <td> does not allow @xml:lang or @lang whereas in HTML5 you can add a @lang attribute there.

(2) <volume-in-collection> allows @xml:lang but not <volume-title>.

(3) A <subj-group> may include a language but not an individual <subject>.

(4) <bold>, <italic> and other elements for physical markup must not include @xml:lang.

This causes several issues. Technically, it's a common practice to allow special XML attributes like @xml:base and @xml:lang globally. When you convert from OOXML via BITS to HTML, you do not want to care about how to keep your language information. In terms of accessibility (apart from technical identifiers such as IDs or URIs) you can't tell whether the element may contain a word from another language. Think of an individual subject in your subject list. The word is french and you want the screenreader to read it with the french pronunciation.

Vincent Lizzy already made a more far-reaching proposal for language tagging at last year's JATS-Con [1]. However, in my opinion it would be sufficient if @xml:lang were allowed everywhere. If users want to restrict this, they should be encouraged to use Schematron. Is this issue already addressed somewhere?

Kind regards,
Martin

--
Martin Kraetke
Lead Content Engineer
le-tex publishing services GmbH

Weissenfelser Str. 84, 04229 Leipzig, Germany

Phone +49 341 355356 143, Fax +49 341 355356 543

martin.kraetke@xxxxxxxxx, http://www.le-tex.de

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