publiccode.yml is not suitable for multi-lingual projects

[adk-swisstopo]

It seems publiccode.yml has been designed to support projects that use one main human language along with some support for localisation into other languages. This does not work for projects and organisations that are fundamentally multi-lingual.

For example, the organisation/name field only supports a single string value. The spec says:

It MUST correspond to the same entity identified by organisation/uri and is intended to provide a human-readable label for that URI. It SHOULD be the canonical, widely recognized form of the name (such as the registered legal or institutional name).

The organisation I work for has at least three names of equal legal significance and putting any one of them as the "main" one, is going to be a source of deep conflicts. This is just one example. I know some fields have support for localisation but I expect there are other fields with similar issues. That said, I have not studied the spec in details.

Would publiccode.yml be interested in properly supporting multi-lingual organisations and projects?

As possible source of inspiration, here is an example of how the Swiss Federal Archives Linked Data Services resolves this: https://ld.admin.ch/office/IV.1.5a?format=jsonld

[bfabio]

@adk-swisstopo this is a good point, thanks for bringing it up.

It sounds interesting as long as it stays simple and usable. The main concern is avoiding heavy or academic models that make the spec harder to understand and fill in.

Thinking about it, there is something similar in Italy too (Bolzano/Bozen) and in that case the solution is simply that the official name itself is the multilingual name. Maybe that is the Columbus' egg here?

If you have a lightweight approach in mind it would be interesting to explore it.