Cross-Cultural and Cross-Lingual Ontology Engineering

Just as internationalization [i18n] and localization [L10n] do not simply consist of translation of interface components, but also of careful cross-cultural and cross-functional considerations to the cultural sensitivities of the intended source and target languages, similar considerations should be given to those issues in the realization of Semantic Web systems. Specifically, this paper describes issues that transcend linguistic and cultural aspects that affect the functional implementation of crosscultural and cross-lingual semantic web services. The paper describes lexical and semantic aspects of ontology design that need to be considered for ontology-based applications that cross cultural and/or linguistic boundaries. The paper places special emphasis on ontology engineering issues related to intensional and extensional ontological definition. It proposes an engineering framework that grounds intensional definitions tightly with cultural aspects, while grounding extensional definitions more closely with linguistic aspects of ontology engineering, specifically as it pertains to design, mapping and querying.