[OSM-talk] Transcription and "internationalization" in place names

[Claudius]

I'd like to bring this topic on the table once more as I've recently 
worked on that in the middle east area.
The challenge is that there are some mappers that add the English name 
to place names so that they (and other international visitors) can read 
the map at www.openstreetmap.org better. Most of the time this derives 
from the misconception that with OpenStreetMap you are editing a map, 
while in fact we are editing a database of geographic features and maps 
are just one representation of the data.

The rule about place names the majority of OSM participants have agreed 
on is "Use the name that is being used on the ground". Adding English as 
an easy to get latinized transliteraion is most of the time not 
following this rule.
Usually the best way to convince those users that it's unnecessary work 
and actually degrading the data quality is by simply pointing them 
towards a different map representation of the same data. MapQuest did a 
great job of showing an "English map view" (showing name:en as place 
name) while preserving local names (shown in brackets): 
http://open.mapquest.com/

I'd like to use my mail to raise awareness of this topic:
Please talk to you fellow mappers if you see them adding English names 
in an act of goodwill to help other visitors of www.openstreetmap.org

I'd also like to get some feedback especially from east asian countries 
(especially looking towards the japanese and korean communities here) if 
they want to revise their naming strategy/guideline to only have the 
local name in the name-tag and the transliteration in name:en

Also in Algeria, Libya and some other countries of the Maghreb the 
double name tagging has recently gained momentum, probably due to some 
remote mappers that cannot read arabic script and wanted to be able to 
read the map. Still the primary langauge in all those countries remains 
Arabic written in the arabic script.

I'm also aware that there are several examples where there are multiple 
primary languages in the same region: Belgium, Chad, Cameroon, etc. - Of 
course for these areas multilangual/multi script naming in the name-tag 
is applicable.

Claudius