[Talk-GB] City names translation

David Woolley forums at david-woolley.me.uk
Mon Aug 4 16:11:26 UTC 2014


On 04/08/14 16:15, Pavlo Dudka wrote:
> Hi! I would like to add ukrainian names for cities of UK, but found that
> SomeoneElse_Revert removed some of name:uk-tags in changeset 20757217
> with a comment "reverting undiscussed Ukrainian "translations" including

There might be some need to check that:

- the names really are those used in Ukraine;
- they haven't been taken from a copyright source -  a likely problem 
when importing in bulk;
- the process will not override existing Ukrainian names.

but...

> ones for which there's nothing on the ground".

I certainly don't think that commonly used names should be rejected 
simply because the local signage doesn't include them.  As I pointed out 
to SomeoneElse elsewhere, most or all UK Universities have a Chinese 
name, even though it probably doesn't appear at the entrance to the 
campus.  That probably extends to all the cities and towns, as well. 
Taking the Chinese case, particularly, the names are often a mix of 
phonetic and semantic translations.  E.g Cambridge has a phonetic for 
the Cam and a straight translation for the bridge, but Oxford is a 
translation of both parts.  Westminster is a translation for West and a 
phonetic for Minster. The phonetic may only work for one dialect, or may 
even be Japanese.

The red brick university in question, had more than 940,000 Google hits 
on its Chinese name (actually now 1.36 million), in spite of not being 
signed with that name.

The reason that I don't normally add foreign language names, unless 
actually signed, is that most of the sources I would have for them would 
have effective database copyrights.

> This is the list of cities I plan to modify: http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/4rF

Those look like the sort of major cities and towns that would have 
foreign language names.





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