Handling multilingual files in the latest candidate release

[tetrisbig]

Hello! I would like to clarify some questions regarding support for multi‑language content in the latest Candidate Release of EPUB 3.4:

1. How are publications with multiple languages handled in the current version of the standard? Which elements and structures should be used to declare each language in both the metadata and the content?

2. What is the recommended internal structure for representing translatable metadata — such as title, author, and description — in more than one language? How do the xml:lang attribute, dc:language, and alternative metadata properties relate to one another?

3. Is there any officially defined structure that allows the publication to automatically adapt to the user’s system or reading‑application language preference? If such a feature does not exist today, are there any plans, discussions, or ongoing work to implement automatic language detection and switching in future versions?

4. Technically speaking, would it be possible to implement automatic language switching using only existing structures — for example, by language‑marked content and conditional display rules — or are essential capabilities still missing from the standard?

Thank you in advance for your clarifications!

[mattgarrish]

Short answer is no, EPUB doesn't currently handle multiple translations of the same work within one publication all that well.

There's a long discussion about this in the community group tracker w3c-cg/publishingcg#47 The issue was moved there to incubate ideas and see if there's any publisher interest.