[Tagging] English translations in non-english countries

[Dave Swarthout]

johnw,

Let me try to clarify a bit more. In Japan the name tag should contain ONLY
the Japanese language name of the feature. If someone wants to add an
English version they are free to do that but it should be added in a
special tag, i.e., name:en

That way renderers that wish to show features labeled in English will use
the information in the name:en=* tag while others may use the Japanese name
from the standard name=* tag. It all depends on the audience the renderer
is trying to please. Having a tag with two versions in its value is an
error by this reasoning.

While the person deleting the parenthetical translation is perhaps being a
bit impolite by not consulting everyone who has added those extra names, he
or she is actually only removing data that is not correct and that will
likely cause problems down the line. In addition, if the practice is as
widespread as you say, contacting everyone doing this bad tagging is simply
too much work.

As stephan correctly points out, if I were in America I certainly wouldn't
appreciate seeing those parenthetical street names in Thai following the
English names, even in a predominantly Thai neighborhood.

Dave

On Sat, Sep 13, 2014 at 5:18 PM, johnw <johnw at mac.com> wrote:

>
> On Sep 13, 2014, at 7:03 PM, Stephan Knauss <osm at stephans-server.de>
> wrote:
>
> No local mapper wants to read München (Munich) on the map. So why should
> Japanese or Chinese mappers want to read something on their map?
>
>
> - if they were using a Japanese only map, then I can understand, but that
> would be pulling from the name:ja= tag, right?
>
> - every single major sign, Street name, Highway exit, Large train station
> identifying sign, City Building label, etc is labeled in English as well as
> Japanese. Every single one of the 2000 or so tollway exits are labeled in
> english, and the hundreds of thousands of blue intersection road signs are
> also printed bi-lingually as well - as a service to the forigners living
> there, as mastering reading and understanding all the Kanji for the various
> place names takes a decade or so of straight practice.
>
>  If they sign most everything imaginable that is important in Japanese +
> English, having it mapped that way too seems reasonable.
>
> Understanding that this "JA (en)" schema is bad for the database makes
> sense - but couldn't those also be pulling from the name:*= tags?
>
>
> Javbw
>
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-- 
Dave Swarthout
Homer, Alaska
Chiang Mai, Thailand
Travel Blog at http://dswarthout.blogspot.com
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