[Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - ogham_stone

[Paul Allen]

On Tue, 9 Feb 2021 at 22:46, Brian M. Sperlongano <zelonewolf at gmail.com>
wrote:


> We DO store translations in the name:XX field, for example, for
> administrative boundaries.  name:en=Rome, name:it=Roma and so forth.
>

As Martin points out, those aren't translations.  Those are names for places
expressed in different languages (usually similar, such as Rome/Roma, but
could be very different).  We do this for large entities such as countries,
so that maps can be presented in a specific language.  Not everyone speaks
or reads English.  And if the map of the world were in Greek, it would be
all greek to me.  Some carto styles render country names in those
countries' native language and native script, which is good if you're
looking
for your own country but not so good if you're looking for a different
country.

We (or at least I) also use the language suffix to denote multilingual
names of small features such as streets where the sign shows the name
in two or more languages.

Some people take it further and add translations.  So as well as Napier
Street (English) and Heol Napier (Welsh) both of which appear on the
sign for a street around the corner from me, people might add Russian,
Greek, and Azerbaijani translations.  I don't consider that useful, as
only the "street" part is likely translateable whereas "napier" can only
be rendered as a transliteration into a different language.  I'm very
much in favour of "painting the sign" because if you're trying to figure
out where you are you'll be looking at signs and comparing them to what is
shown on the map (even if you can't speak the language).

Is there a general rule of thumb we can employ here to say "in this
> category of circumstances, storing translations is appropriate, and in
> these other categories, they are not?"
>

In my opinion we need another way of tagging to handle this so we can say
"This is the name, as it appears on the sign, and it happens to be in Welsh"
and "This is the name in Arabic although it doesn't appear on the sign."
Which keeps the existing language prefix is open to debate.

Of course, existing usage probably means it's too late to make the change,
so we have to come up with rules that get documented in the wiki and ignored
because most mappers don't read the wiki if the editor offers them something
that appears to be for what they want to do.

-- 
Paul
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