Translating ontologies from a source language towards a target one is a required process both for the conception of a new
ontology from existing ones (reuse) and for common use of an ontology by different knowledge based systems. The usual approach
for translation is based upon the existence of a translator for each pair of languages from and to which the ontology must
be translated. Therefore, several translating tools are necessary.
We propose a translation approach which employs a unique translator no matter what source and target languages are involved.
It relies on two principal components. The first one is a meta-language called M_Kif which extends the Kif language with the
concept of meta-relation to describe representation ontologies. The second one is a pivot representation which unifies different
styles of representations. The translation tool is an interpretation program of the meta-relation definitions specified in
the source and target representation ontologies.