Workflow - How to organize multi language (IPTC) metadata?

Manfr3d

Hi,

I often get image requests from people speaking different languages.
And I also post my images to websites with different languages.
So I usualy delete the EXIF and write IPTC data in the language of the
target platform so that my images can be found via a search function.

An example:

I shot a concert of a spanish band in germany. The images went to a
german website with german keywording. Then I got a request from
the band management for those images. Now I had to do the keywording
again so that the spanish guys could do sth. with the metadata (like display
Copyright in their online gallery).

The cliens were happy, but the logic of my evergrowing archive is slowly
eroding because there can only be one set of IPTC data in one image.
So far I haven't found a proper way to organize my images by language.
I have tough about creating a library for each language at the cost
of storage space. But what a chaos if I need to edit an image later again!
Keywording in english only is also not a option because some clients
demand keywording in their language.

Maybe someone of you guys already has a working solution, that he/she
can share?

BinaryFx

If I was you, I would hunt around this site:

http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/

And or contact David Riecks at the above site, as he is the first person I think of when it comes to these topics. I have no affiliation with the site or David, I recommend him from my interactions with him on various industry related web forums and email lists over the years.

David is active at the following site, which may also be a good place to ask this type of question, as they live and breath IPTC and XMP metadata over there:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/iptc-photometadata
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/iptc4xmp/

Sincerely,

Stephen Marsh.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/

Manfr3d

Excellent resource! .. I'm reading my way trough it right now.
At first glance however it doesn' seem that someone actualy
dealt with more than one language simultaneously in metadata.

claudermilk

If faced with that, I'd make use of the features of my DAM. When keywording, it can maintain a thesaurus of synonyms which are automatically added. So I'd set up the additional language translations as synonyms of my base English keywords & just have all three (or more) embedded. If more needed to be done, I'd probably start looking at writing a custom script to perform the translation of my boilerplate text.