Language alternative properties

Many metadata properties that can contain text are “language alternative” properties. These can contain the same text in multiple languages - tools that display the text can then pick the preferred language. One of the items is usually marked as the default value, that is used by software that does not pick a specific language.

Most files and tools make little use of this: Usually there is exactly one text in the file and often the file contains merely a “default”, without the information what language it is. In those cases, the “language alternative” fields are functionally identical to normal text fields.

If needed or useful, the Metadata Toolbox allows you to enter the text in an arbitrary number of languages and mark one of them as the default text. Make sure to use the same content in every language, otherwise the receiver that you hand the file to may read the text in their preferred language only.

This functionality exists for properties that are stored in the XMP metadata section. Some properties are duplicated in several metadata sections (such as XMP and additionally in EXIF data and/or IPTC-IIM data), in those cases only the language that is marked as default is copied to the other section. For example “Title” property (XMP name dc:title) is also stored in the IPTC-IIM Dataset 2:5 (name objectName), but IPTC-IIM does not have a notion of languages, so it will always store a single language only. Tools that are aware of languages typically handle this correctly (i.e. load the data from the XMP section only), but if IPTC-IIM and/or EXIF is important to you, this is something you may want to be aware of.