Document formalisation
Rei Miyata · 2020
This chapter addresses the research question RQ-F1: Can municipal documents be well formalised? The practical purpose of document formalisation is twofold: to provide a document template that helps authors formulate well-structured documents and to provide a basis that enables contextual translation using machine translation (MT) systems. The chapter formalizes a document structure for municipal procedures by further specialising the document elements provided by the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). It elaborates on the analysis of functional document elements. Based on the mapping results, the chapter modifies the labels and created fine-grained sub-elements of DITA. Documents explaining ‘Resident Registration’ tend to contain within them the procedure for obtaining a copy of a Residence Record. Using the DITA framework helps us to diagnose existing documents and decide how to reorganise them. The resultant specialised DITA structure demonstrated that it comprehensively accommodates the functional elements of municipal procedures. The chapter concludes that municipal procedural documents were well formalised.