Rather, these versions could function as reference definitions in their own right, as objects of discussion, adaptation, and extension in locally specific ways. One might think of the metadata semantics shared within DC-Multilingual to be, in some sense, independent of any particular language, hence universal. The versions of Dublin Core elements in various languages should share a single namespace. The descriptive names and element definitions are meant to be read primarily by humans, the tokens primarily by machines. The tokens look like English words but stand for universal elements.
Universal elements can have interchangeable names and definitions in multiple languages.
For now we should keep these separate so that we more easily can change them when we know what is required. Perhaps element definitions could be dynamically extracted from an RDF file to an HTML file, or vice versa. This is clearly a question for further research. Either way, what the namespace name points to can change over time, so we can go ahead and write metadata with confidence. For example, the Dublin Core could grow to have more than fifteen elements.