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MESA Publishes HBO-Developed M&E Industry Language Metadata Table

The Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA) Aug. 7 published a new language metadata resource, one developed by HBO and released with the goal of uniting data specialists with a single, open-source table of language metadata values for the media and entertainment industry.

The new MESA Language Metadata Table (LMT) is an expandable mapping resource that organizes language metadata from a preliminary list of nearly 140 languages and dialects, and is based on work conducted for international HBO productions over the past 16 months.

During the July 24 Smart Content Summit in New York, Yonah Levenson, HBO’s manager of taxonomy, and HBO metadata analyst Laura Dawson shared how broadcast and media companies are dealing with multiple language standards, by using both proprietary and non-proprietary terms. Global distribution requirements have exposed the need to consistently present languages for audio, text on the screen, packaging and display, and online user interfaces, they said, while encouraging industry adoption of the IETF BCP 47 languages standard.

In the spirit of industry collaboration, HBO granted MESA the rights to the company’s work.

MESA’s executive director Guy Finley explained that the LMT has been posted for open source download on MESA’s web site, and that an LMT Working Group will be formed under the auspices of MESA’s Smart Content Council for ongoing development. Content creators, owners and distributors, as well as MESA members, are invited to apply to participate, with an inaugural meeting slated for October.

To download LMT v1.0 as a PDF, click here and for an Excel file version, click here.

If you are interested in participating in the LMT Working Group click here to apply. For additional information, or to learn more, contact Mary Yurkovic, director of the Smart Content, via [email protected].