Making XML schema to support multilingual markup

Abstract

Understanding and exchanging XML documents with multilingual markups is a common requirement. This paper proposes a schema design method to support multilingual markup of XML based on two attributes introduced for every element to be transformed, i.e., locID and attrList. It ensures that all XML instances derived from the translated schema no matter what language used and how the name is translated can be well understood by the program developed for the original language after transformation. The transformation process is rather automatic, low cost and straightforward; also semantics of elements and attributes are precisely reserved. An example of email is illustrated to show the effect of the method.