[Tagging] Immigration, asylum, refugee centers

[johnw]

> On Sep 24, 2015, at 11:56 AM, Dave Swarthout <daveswarthout at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Here in Thailand there are many nationalities beside English speakers that make use of these offices, among them are large numbers of  Burmese, Cambodians, Germans, and Japanese.


here in Japan it would be mostly non-english speakers as well (Brazillians, Chinese, Koreans, and then English speakers) - but English is the common language we all have studied, so all the signs (like most throughout Japan) are printed in Japanese and English. I’m pretty sure the common language between all those people you listed (besides Thai) would be English as well. 

Support for mulit-language rendering in general is severely lacking.  Most signage in Japan is shown in Japanese and English (every single tollway sign, road sign and train station - hundreds of thousands of signs), so the default -carto render should render both as well, but doesn't.  In this case, -carto renders the map with less detail than real life. A JA version of the map can be JA only, but for scripts that can’t be parsed by english speakers (like most asian scripts), -carto should render their EN tag below the name=* label - as that would properly reflect “the ground truth” 

This lack of being able to properly reflect the ground truth led to the JA(EN) tag issue in Japan, as Foreign resident mappers who use English attempted to show this duality in the real life signs in the name tag field [ name=Japanese (English) ], but ultimately is is not good data policy for the name=* tag, so it is banned.  But  nothing is done to render both languages (currently), creating a crappy situation for the default -carto there. 

Which is why, for a building almost exclusively used by foreigners, in a place where the native script is hard to read, I suggest the name field be something parsable ****to those foreigners****, whatever common language that is. 

Javbw
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