C: Language

Definition: A language of the intellectual content of the resource.

Obligation: Recommended.

What is this element?

The Language element is used to record the language of the content of the resource, or the language(s) in which the service is provided. It would be used for an Agency record if that Agency internally conducts its business in a language other than English. This element enables users to limit their search to resources held in a particular language or languages, and enables portals to present information in preferred languages.

For English in New Zealand use the language value "en", unless a knowledge of New Zealand colloquial English is required to make sense of the resource in which case "en-nz' could be used.

Repetition

Where a single resource contains more than one language, you can repeat the Language element to cover each language.

Where a resource exists separately in a different language, it is treated as a separate resource. Each version gets its own metadata record because information such as Identifier and, probably, Audience will be different. The metadata records can be linked using Relation.

Qualifiers

Controlled Vocabularies/Encoding Schemes

It is strongly recommended that you choose the values of the Language element from a standard set defined by RFC 3066 Tags for the Identification of Languages (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3066.txt).

The language value is a two or three letter language code derived from ISO 639 : 1998.

If required to indicate country specific language usage, the language code can be followed by a two letter country code from ISO 3166 : 1977 Country Codes. http://www.iso.org/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/02iso-3166-code-lists/list-en1.html

To accommodate dialects, a sub-tag can be used, for example, for dialects of Maori. These sub-tags must be registered with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). A list of the sub-tags is available from http://www.iana.org/assignments/language-tags

The syntax is defined by RFC 3066 Tags for the Identification of Languages (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3066.txt). RFC 3066 allows the use of ISO639-2/T : 1998 three-letter codes for languages that are not described with a two-letter code in ISO 639-1 : 1998. A list of the two and three-letter codes is available from http://lcweb.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/englangn.html.

(Note: ISO 639-1 : 1998 2-letter codes must be used in preference to ISO 639-2 : 1998 3-letter codes. Where ISO 639-2 : 1998 codes are used, the Terminology code must be used in preference to the Bibliographic code.)

Examples