Hi Frederick,
I agree that this will be up to the locals to decide but here is my two cents worth. The wiki seems pretty specific in regard to the ‘on the ground’ situation. It would seem to me (a very infrequent traveller) that they should use the local language for name: (if that is what is on the ground) and name:en for english equivalents. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:name I also personally think that the organisations should also respect the local language and any major data acquisition should be in the local language and, possibly also at the same time an English translation could be provided. I would also assume any large in-country data acquisition would also be done in conjunction with local staff, so again local language first plus alternates. Bulk mapping projects via the HOT task manager would seldom fill in lots of ‘names’ as remote mappers will have little local knowledge (from my experience). If any mappers were using things such as Mapillary images for remote mapping then the on ground rule would certainly apply to what they see in the images. In the end it’s the renderer/mapping program that gets to decide which to use and its not that hard to switch or print two maps if the objects contain both attributes. Any exports from online systems, used regularly by these organisations, should also have an option to include alternate languages rather than just English. Disclaimer – I am a volunteer mapper for one of the mentioned organisations but only locally in an English speaking country, not internationally. Cheers - Phil From: John Whelan [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, 28 November 2019 11:40 AM To: Frederik Ramm Cc: hot Subject: Re: [HOT] Name tag in non-latin script - hindrance for NGOs/aid agencies? Is there any reason why name:en could not be used? I'm not seeking to influence here but looking for enlightenment. In Canada locally we are able to display the map in either English or French certainly in OSMand. OSMand defaults to the name value if name:fr is not available. Thanks John Frederik Ramm wrote on 2019-11-27 7:00 PM: Dear HOT list, the DWG has been involved in a discussion being had by the community in a country where the official language uses non-latin characters. I would like to keep this abstract hence I will not say which country it is even though some of you will know; I don't think it matters. It is not Japan but you can imagine Japan if you need an example. In the country, more than 98% of the population speak the official language as their native language, though English is commonly taught at school and used in higher education. Older people or people outside of the university system will often not be able to write English fluently. Signs (road signs, signposts) seem to be exclusively in the official language if less important, and in official language plus English where more important. It is claimed that some signs in big cities are English-only but I haven't yet seen one. There is a dominant group in the country that says: Let us use English for our "name" tags, and put the official language in name:xx (where xx is the language code). This is relatively unusual for OSM, but it seems to be the current consensus in the community. Some of them also request that changeset discussions should be had in English instead of the official language. Just like in many other countries, OSM was first adopted by people at or involved with universities and hence used to English, so the decision came lightly. Parts of the discussion hinge on not all IT systems properly supporting the special characters needed for the official language; but the main argument brought up again and again by the proponents is that there are many people from aid agencies and NGOs contributing data to OSM or using data from OSM in that country, and the data was of lesser use (or even useless) to them if name tags were in the official language. (This reasoning is also used for the request to hold changeset discussions in English.) We have been told by the pro-English-name group: as the major user & contributors to the local repository are the aid agencies like UN, MSF, Red Cross/Red Crescent eventually they are also facing problem while using the data ... We have been reported a recent case were WFP was unable to use the data due to this reason. ... Aid agencies like UN, MSF, Red Crescent have run many projects to map large portions of the country and given those data to OSM, which makes them big contributors and users of the OSM data. But this data becomes useless if all `name` tags are replaced with [local language] ... The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) made a map for disaster response that is available in OSM main site as an additional layer, which also can't render [local language]. And that makes it a challenge in times of disaster response. Of course, the pro-local-name group feels stymied by the request to use English; they feel this is an sign that the map is not "their" map but someone else's and that requesting English changeset discussions practically excludes large parts of the population. This is an issue that ultimately the local community must solve for itself. But it seems to be that there might be a danger of favouring the comfort of international contributors and NGOs over that of the local population - in a line of thought that goes "the map in our country gains more if we can keep these NGOs interested by using English, than if we attract the less-well-English speaking citizens of our country". I hope that there might be people from the organisations mentioned (UN, MSF, Red Cross/Red Crescent, WFP, HOT) on this list who can tell me if their organisations have policies or a general approach towards issues like this. Is this a thing, projects hinging on whether the locals are willing to deal in English? Or is "we have to use English to favour our international partners" a red herring? Bye Frederik -- Sent from <https://www.postbox-inc.com> Postbox
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