[OSM-dev] Database-manipulation without PostGIS

[Claudius]

There's this user in Iran who changed name-tags for some cities from the 
farsi script (the one used in the country) to the latin transcript 
because his Garmin PNA doesn't have unicode support.
I'd like to help him get a usable Garmin map for Iran without 
manipulating the base OSM database by copying name:en to name in an Iran 
excerpt before running it through mkgmap.

I'd love to do that without setting up a full PostGIS server by using 
some osmosis-magic on the Iran.osm excerpt [1] but I guess that's not 
doable from what I read on the osmosis wikie [2]. Any ideas or do I have 
to set up PostGIS?

Claudius

[1] http://downloads.cloudmade.com/asia/iran
[2] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osmosis