[Tagging] Translating tags into the database itself ?

Simone Saviolo simone.saviolo at gmail.com
Thu Aug 18 12:23:37 BST 2011


2011/8/18 Pieren <pieren3 at gmail.com>

> On Thu, Aug 18, 2011 at 12:41 PM, Simone Saviolo
> <simone.saviolo at gmail.com> wrote:
> > +1. It's not a "Latin name", but the scientific name itself.
>
> Okay for latin ... but OSM shouldn't be reserved for experts imo. I'm
> afraid that this sub-tag will need a systematic translation to human
> readable text in editors which is not the case today.
>

Let alone the fact that Latin *is* human readable text... it's not a matter
of being experts. To people who don't speak English, amenity=school is just
as incomprehensible as species=Juglans regia - that's why we mark it on a
raster image with an icon. The same goes with trees: if a renderer/consumer
is really interested in the species of the tree, it can just look up the
species name (Juglans regia) and find a way to make it easily
comprehensible: an icon of that specific tree, or its common name,
whatever.

> Also, for name=* tags I thought the convention was to use the local name,
> > for example name=Torino, name:en=Turin. After all, "Torino" is the name
> of
> > the place, and "Turin" is how English-speaking people call it.
>
> I hope you understand what I mean. A name is hard to translate
> automatically or without concerns. And if we do this for names, it is
> for one or some elements (the place node or way or relation), not for
> millions of objects with the same, identical tags saying exactly the
> same thing.
>
> If you don't like the school example because it is a primary tag, I
> can use the "surface" tag. We tag "highway=unclassified" +
> "surface=paved". If I apply the same concept as species, I could also
> tag "highway=unclassified" + "surface=paved" +
> "surface:de=asphaltiert" + "surface:fr=goudronné"...
>

surface=paved is just as precise as species=Juglans regia. It's up to the
consumers to adapt it to their audience. Also, I'd expect that a Frenchmen
understands that a certain road is paved without the need to call it
goudronné.

Secondarily, the Juglans regia is known in Italian as "noce da frutto", or
also as "noce bianco". Let's suppose a similar ambiguity exists in the
language of choice (UK English?): how would you understand that a thousand
trees marked "noce da frutto" are actually the same as the other thousand
marked "noce bianco"? On the other hand, Juglans regia is unique and
internationally acknowledged.

Pieren
>

Ciao,

Simone
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