LANGUAGE SUPPORT

The capability to validate RDA strings in languages other than English was added to MARC Report in version 2.50. Currently, French, German, and Spanish are supported. We may add more languages in the future.

RDA validation is based on the RDA Registry. Therefore, the universe of language support in MARC Report is limited to the languages in which RDA has been fully translated into.

For information about RDA translation, visit this link: http://www.rdaregistry.info/rgAbout/rdaref/translations/

VALIDATION

Access the “RDA Language Support” options from the “RDA” page of the program options–click the “Edit” button (in the middle of the right side of the page) to pull up the language options.

Select the codes for the languages that you want to validate.

The default language is English.

The validation of RDA strings applies to the MARC content designators that you have selected for validation on the preceding page of the options. In the default setup, this would be the following:

100 $e, 110 $e, 111 $j
336 $a, 
337 $a, 
338 $a
700 $e, 700 $i
710 $e, 710 $i
711 $i, 711 $j
730 $i

As time goes on, this list may change. For example, support for validation of the 34X fields could be added to a future version; if that happens, language support for these fields will also be simultaneously implemented.

IMPORTANT NOTE

The leader character encoding byte (000/09) must be set to 'a' in order for validation of non-English RDA strings to take place.

HOW IT WORKS

Validation is tied to the 'Language of cataloging', as specified by the 040 $b language code in a record.

Thus, if the language of cataloging is 'fre', and if you have selected 'fre' on this options page, then the program will validate the RDA strings from the selected content designators against the corresponding French strings in the RDA registry.

However, if the language of cataloging is 'fre', and you have not selected 'fre' on this options page, the program will validate the RDA strings against the default (English) strings from the registry; and if the language of cataloging really is French, then you will likely see a lot of error messages.

In this second case, one of the first error messages you will see will say

040 $b validation disabled

as a way of prompting you to check your RDA language options.

If the language of cataloging is not one of the language codes currently supported, for example, 'ita', then instead the following message will appear:

040 $b validation not supported

as a way of advising you that because we do not yet support RDA strings for Italian, then we cannot validate them.

Note that the reason for this 'lack of support' of a language may be either:

1) There is not a full translation available from the RDA Registry, or
2) MARC Report lacks the capability to display diacritics for that language

As mentioned above, English is the default validation language in MARC Report. So, in either of the cases above where an error message regarding the 040 $b is displayed, the program will try to validate the RDA strings in the record against English language strings.

To further illustrate, and to emphasize the importance of the 040 $b, lets consider the following scenario: you have selected French as a validation language option, and you import a record with 040 $b set to 'eng'; you then change all of the RDA terms in the record from English to French, but do not change 040 $b to 'fre'. MARC Report will then spit out an 'Invalid' message for every one of strings in the record that are validated as RDA strings.

RDA APPENDIX OPTIONS

There is also a language dropdown box that appears (beginning in version 2.51) when customizing the list of relationships from RDA Appendix I or Appendix J. The purpose of this box is to display the strings–the relationship labels and their definitions–in the supported languages. So, for instance, if you would prefer to see French labels and definitions, then simply select “fre” from the dropdown box.

What's important to note about this is that only the strings displayed change–the validation selections (eg. “In 100”, “In 700”, etc.) remain the same across all available languages. For example, if I modify the default set (by creating a new set), and turn on “In 100” and “In 110/11” for the relationship labelled “editor” in English, and then change the language of the strings to “fre”, the selections for “editeur” for “In 100” and “In 110/11” will remain in place.

LANGUAGE SUPPORT SUMMARY

1. Use the RDA Language Support page to modify which languages are validated.

2. The leader character encoding byte (000/09) must be set to 'a' in order to validate non-English

3. Decisions made using the Appendix I and Appendix J editors apply to all languages.