Posted by d.barclay on 8 March 2023 - 9:00am Original photo by Amador Loureiro
edited by Denis Barclay

By Sarah Middleton, Head of Advocacy and Community Engagement at the Digital Preservation Coalition.

Over the years, the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) has produced many guides and reports which have supported the development of digital preservation tools and standards, as well as the professional community engaged in digital preservation. The DPC's resources are predominantly in English but they are of universal relevance; therefore, the translation of DPC material into other languages is a vital way of supporting the digital preservation community across the world.

As part of its program of translations, which aims to provide better access to digital preservation support for the practitioners who need it, wherever they are in the world, the DPC has recently released another translation of a key resource – in German.

The German translation of Core requirements for a digital preservation system forms part of the DPC’s popular Procurement Toolkit and offers a structure for describing preservation system requirements in a standardized manner. The Core Requirements may be used to organize and communicate requirements clearly, without reinventing the wheel.

This translation was created by Jens Ludwig, who is the Scientific Officer for the Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management (BASE) in Germany. When we asked Jens why his team had chosen to translate this resource, he said: “Translating most of the requirements was just useful for us as part of working on our own requirements. We then decided to give something back to the community and translate also the rest of the document.”

We have found this to be the case for many of the translations provided by the community, and the DPC is very appreciative of the effort behind these offers.

This latest resource is the first DPC publication to be offered in German, but with the help of other volunteer translators around the world, the DPC has been adding to its portfolio of translated resources since 2018 and it now includes:

• The Digital Preservation Handbook in French and Italian
• The DPC Rapid Assessment Model in Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese and Turkish
• The Executive Guide on Digital Preservation in French, Spanish and Arabic
• Core Requirements for a Digital Preservation System in German
• Technology Watch Publications on Access Strategies, Preserving Databases, Preserving GIS and Preserving Spreadsheets in French

With the ultimate aim of sharing all of its key resources in a range of languages, the DPC continues to work with volunteer translations and digital preservation networks around the world. Other translations planned for publication shortly, include:

• Technology Watch Publications on Preserving 3D data and Preserving Wikidata in French
• A Technology Watch Guidance Note on Checksums in Italian
• A Technology Watch Guidance Note Access Case Study in Korean
• The DPC Rapid Assessment Model in Finnish

The DPC is an international charitable foundation which supports digital preservation, helping members around the world to deliver resilient long-term access to digital content and services through community engagement, targeted advocacy work, training and workforce development, capacity building, good practice and standards, and through good management and governance. Its vision is a sustainable future for our digital assets, regardless of geography.

To offer a translation of DPC resources, please contact sarah.middleton@dpconline.org