Add multilingual URIs

[MathiasBornI14Y]

Introduce multilingual URL fields in addition to existing multilingual labels

Descriptions of datasets, their distributions, APIs and public services may (or, depending on the type, must) include Uniform Resource Identifier (URI). These URIs may lead to landing pages, legal or technical documentation, downloads or web applications. While the labels associated with these URLs can be recorded in multiple languages, DCAT-AP CH restricts the URI to be language-neutral.

Many web applications are designed to encode the language in the URL (e.g. /de, /fr, /it). It's often not possible to follow the DCAT-AP CH guideline to use a language-neutral URI, because such a URI is simply not available without changing the system itself.

The current implementation leads to problems such as the following: Users read a dataset description in Italian. When they click on the provided URL, they are taken to the landing page in German.

This example shows the need to provide fields for URLs in all relevant languages.

Name and/or affiliation of the author:
Mathias Born, Interoperability Service (I14Y.ch)

Portal, service or software product presented or affected:
I14Y.ch

Clear and concise description of the problem or requirement:
The current DCAT-AP CH standard (version 2 and the draft of version 3) mandates that only a single URI should be recorded, which is language-neutral, while labels can be multilingual. However, this approach does not accommodate the need for language-specific URIs. This limitation impacts the user experience, as users may be directed to pages in a language that does not match their preferred or selected language context.

Proposed solution:
Introduce a mechanism to allow URIs to be recorded for each relevant language. This could involve adding fields for URIs corresponding to the languages supported by the catalog. For example:

German: https://example.com/de/resource
French: https://example.com/fr/resource
Italian: https://example.com/it/resource
English: https://example.com/en/resource

This change would align better with multilingualism needs while maintaining compatibility with the multilingual label requirements.

Link to section:
https://www.dcat-ap.ch/releases/3.0_workingdraft/dcat-ap-ch_3.0_workingdraft.html#multilingualism