[Talk-bd] Discussion: Issues with name localization for Bangladesh

Sat Nov 23 03:53:11 UTC 2019

Dear Frederik,

Hope this finds you well. Great to hear from you!

I'm Tasauf aka Ribin  from OSM Bangladesh community. You might remember me
having a discusion with you about data quality, possible vandalism & your
advice on that  at Heidelberg during SotM. However, I have been involved
with OSM in Bangladesh since 2014 & now leading the community's
coordination groups. I'm also a board member  of HOT.

Just to clear up you queries one by one:

1. Most of the people in Bangladesh using internet/map understands the
names written in English as English is the second language used from the
primary education system. Though in case of writing they preffer to write
it as Bangla on Roman script as using bangla keyboard is not yet much
popular for the general population.

The population under 50 mostly using internet considering both high &
avarage educated people do understands & can communicate in basic English
while in written but while speaking Bangla is the native. But also have to
keep in mind a good bit of english word stock is found on the
conversations. People over 50 unless educated are not that much of popular
user of internet/ maps. We are still on a verge to institutionalize Bangla
in our official use but not even at the half of the way.

Personally I would love to see Bangla everywhere but using Bangla is more
of an argument of emotion than use case for us for the time being & having
changeset discussions/ tagging in Bangla is a good to have rather than a
necessity in this stage. Also to keep in mind, even the translation engines
often have ambiguous/ inappropriate results as not a lot being done at
backend.

Most of the signages on the roads of the city Uses both English & Bangla on
them, though a significant number has only English nameplates. There are a
few only Bangla signboards too visible. If you go to the rural part you
will find more only Bangla signage appearing on the scenerio.

2. OSM was introduced in Bangladesh back in 2011. The more coordinated
community based approach started from 2015 and OSM Bangladesh Foundation
has been legally formed & registered at 2018. As of now anyone contributing
to OSM in Bangladesh is considered a member of the foudation though a
coordination board is present for handling the legal & organizational
proceedures while a team of 45+ mappers/developers mostly known as "BHOOT"
s are coordinating the technical, data & volunteer engagement part. The
foundation remains open to any individual suggesting / get involved on the
regular discussions. The State of the Map Asia held in Dhaka is hosted by
the foundation earlier this month where 500+ osm contributors gathered
togather. Also, discussions being made to push OSMBDF applying under OSMF
local chapter for better calibration.

The OSMBD community including the foundation itself  has been having
discussions/ updates channeled through the facebook group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/osmbd rather than the website itself. So,
going through that might give you better storyline.

3. As part of mailing list ettiquete you can eaither use the first or last
name of a person you want to address. Having Mr. On salutation with the
last name is more formal approach. Usually, in Bangladesh we put Bhai(M) &
Apu(F) after the first name as general casual referencing to a person in
group.

Hope these resolves all the basic queries you have. Will gladly try to
cooperate more if you need any.

Thanks for being in touch.

Tasauf (Ribin)

On Sat, 23 Nov 2019, 5:05 am Frederik Ramm, <frederik at remote.org> wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> the Data Working Group has been made aware of this discussion. I am from
> Germany and I have very little knowledge about Bangladesh, so I would
> initially like to ask three basic questions that will help me understand
> the situation:
>
> 1. What is the status of English in everyday life in Bangladesh? Can
> everyone who uses the Internet also communicate in written English, or
> would a requirement of "please write your changeset comment in English"
> exclude certain parts of the population? Also, what about signage - will
> signs with street names or city names contain Bangla, English, or both
> names?
>
> For comparison, here in Germany, while nowadays most kids learn English
> at school, a significant portion of people who are 50 years or older
> would not be able to communicate in English unless they had higher
> education.
>
> 2. What is the relationship between the "OpenStreetMap Bangladesh
> Foundation" and the mapper community in Bangladesh? How many mappers are
> members in the OSMBDF? How can mappers join the organisation, and how do
> they democratically influence what the OSMBDF does? I checked the web
> site but I found no information about that.
>
> 3. A general question about mailing list etiquette. Is it usual, in
> mailing list discussions in Bangladesh, to refer to other participants
> with their last name? If you were to reply to my post with "Dear Mr
> Ramm", would that be (a) normal, (b) an expression of respect, or (c) an
> expression of "you are not part of my group so I will not use your first
> name"?
>
> Bye
> Frederik
>
> --
> Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"
>
> _______________________________________________
> Talk-bd mailing list
> Talk-bd at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-bd
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-bd/attachments/20191123/9ccb90ff/attachment-0001.html>