[OSM-talk] Languages

Ben Laenen benlaenen at gmail.com
Thu May 7 12:35:45 BST 2009


On Thursday 07 May 2009, Tal wrote:
> Imagine that you plan a business trip to Tel-Aviv and want to print
> yourself a map of the city. Or maybe you'll be spending a week in
> Cairo. Can you not see the benefit in having a map with the street
> names in a different language than the one on the sign?

name:xx is only for the names on the street sign (the official names, 
and locals will often know them)

Other translations or transliteration don't have a place in name:xx 
tags, but could be in other tags (let's say name_translation:xx(:yy), 
or name_transliteration:xx:yy:zzzz with xx the language and/or script 
you've trans(iter)ated into, yy the language and/or script you've 
translated from, and zzzz the transliteration ruleset you've used).

Or you'd end up asking locals the route to street names in your 
translated language, or blindly driving through streets with names on 
your map you can't see anywhere. So you may be able to read nice names 
like "Tulip Street" or "Station Lane" in Tel Aviv but what have you 
gained with that? Even if you can't read a single letter of the script 
in the country you're at, you could still try to match the shapes to 
those you see on street signs, or point locals to the names on the map 
if you're lost.

Ben




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