Metadata Language setting now required in 6.4?

[Amber Leahey]

Hi Dataverse Community

We noticed in Dataverse 5.7 there is a new Metadata Language setting configured by installations and setup at the collection level to specify the language for the collection or to allow depositors to select the language at the dataset level. 

In Canada, we have many schools that enter metadata in more than one language (e.g. French and English) we would like to have the option to disable this feature, is this at all possible? We were able to figure out how to turn this off before with 5.7-6.2 and it wasn't mentioned in the 6.4 documentation that it is now required, or in the online guides (Configuration — Dataverse.org). 

Was this made to be required more recently in 6.3 or 6.4? 

If you select the language at the collection level it forces the user to enter metadata in a certain language regardless of their browser or interface language selection including the display of certain fields and drop-down controlled vocabularies. By default, if this Metadata Language setting is turned on, it would be better behaviour to display the language of the user's browser/interface selection and display the controlled vocabularies in that language, similar to how the fields and UI are translated, and then store the values that would be saved, in the metadata language selected by the collection or depositors, depending on how it is configured by an installation. 

 Many thanks for any thoughts or feedback on this! We are really curious if others have a workaround to turn this off or other ideas to support this configuration.  

Best, 

Amber Leahey

 

[Philip Durbin]

Hi Amber,

My understanding is that :MetadataLanguages controls whether or not the feature is enabled and that it's disabled by default, even in recent Dataverse versions. (If someone knows better, please correct me!)

Just to clarify, you want to disable it? And you want all datasets in English?

Thanks,

Phil

p.s. I hear your UX ideas as well but I'm starting with some clarifying questions. 😄

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[James Myers]

As Phil said, the main switch is the :MetadataLanguages setting. Once you’ve had that on though, any Dataset that has been created with a Metadata language will still show the line about the metadata being in that language and, if a Collection has chosen to require a specific metadata language (as opposed to allowing each Dataset to choose), new Datasets will continue to use it.

 

The :MetadataLanguages setting does not affect the labelling of fields. That is controlled only by the :Languages setting. The only thing the metadata language choice for a dataset does is to show a label that the metadata is in that language and to put that metadata language in metadata exports to indicate the language of the metadata.

 

Here’s an image from my almost 6.5 test server where I’ve selected French as the display language (:Languages) and selected English as the metadata language (:MetadataLanguages):

 

 

Hope that helps,

 

-- Jim

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[James Myers]

One more note: As you pointed out, the selected metadata language does also affect the language used for controlled vocabulary values, keeping them in the same language as the manually entered metadata (this is true in the display and I think in metadata exports, although I think at least some exports may repeat the controlled values in more than one language) rather than showing them in the language selected for the UI. That could be changed, but whether that’s useful (you might be able to read some values you couldn’t) or confusing (the metadata is in a mix of languages) is the question. In any case, if you turn off the metadata language (globally or by deleting the chosen metadatalanguage on a give dataset), the values would then be in the language chosen for display.

 

-- Jim

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[Amber Leahey]

Thank you for your answers, yes I agree, I think there could be a UI improvement for this feature if it is turned on, to support that controlled vocabularies display to use the user's browser/Dataverse selected language. This could also be more closely tied to the metadata fields itself, allowing users to define this more flexibly, and currently I only see it exported to Dataverse JSON and not to DataCite in 6.4. 

Just to confirm though, 100% is there is a way to turn OFF ":MetadataLanguages setting" at the installation level, if so, do you have any instructions? Are there other implications were not aware if we choose to do this? Are you getting a sense that DataCite will require language?

Many thanks, 

Amber

[Philip Durbin]

The way to turn off settings like this is to delete them. In this case:

curl -X DELETE http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:MetadataLanguages

Please see also "if you want to remove a setting" at https://guides.dataverse.org/en/6.5/installation/config.html#database-settings

I would think it's safe to delete because the :MetadataLanguages is off by default, for a new installation of Dataverse. I'm not aware of DataCite requiring it.

I hope this helps!

Phil

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/dataverse-community/691ecc90-4fbc-4715-98e8-bb0ce87980d9n%40googlegroups.com.

[Amber Leahey]

Amazing thank you :)