[OSM-talk] Can wikidata links help fight name inflation?

[Komяpa]

2015-06-07 14:43 GMT+03:00 Simon Poole <simon at poole.ch>:

>
> Two remarks on the the discussion:
>
> - the standard point: adding translations of names to OSM is (naturally)
> nonsense, adding names commonly in use in a language for places isn't. I
> somehow suspect that Frederiks suggestion is actually an attempt to
> offload the dealing with the nonsense aspect to wikidata.
>

This basically isolates the problem with understanding. Somehow you
distinguish "names" from "translations".

There is an object. People in culture A call it "A1", some of them call it
"A2". People from culture B call it "B1". People from culture C don't use
this object very often, but call it "C1". People from culture D haven't
ever seen this object yet, but after first one of them sees it, he calls it
"D2", but later scientists from culture D ask everyone to call it "D1".
Object is located in a way so culture B lives around it.

So, in my perfect OSM world:

name = B1
name:B = B1
name:A = A1
alt_name:A = A2
name:C = C1
name:D = D1
alt_name:D = D2

note: name:B is there even though culture B surrounds it - think of
McDonalds in Belarus. It has name=McDonalds, even though usually objects in
BY have name= in Russian.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translation says "Translation is the
communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an
equivalent target-language text."
Translation is about giving some valid C1 given D2. The process of matching
is "translation", not C1.

When I see text in Russian reffering Лондон, when I retell it to someone
English-speaking, I use London.
(then "London" is translation and should be removed from OSM as nonsense ;)

For geographical names there are different means that include
transcription, transliteration and adaptation of all kinds.
The fact that it can be thought to be automatizable to a certain degree
should not trick you into thinking "oh, these aren't real names".

-- 
Darafei "Komяpa" Praliaskouski
OSM BY Team - http://openstreetmap.by/
xmpp:me at komzpa.net mailto:me at komzpa.net
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20150607/e16f410a/attachment.html>