Hello,

On 13.09.2014 07:49, johnw wrote:
Is there in OSM wide set for this? pulling all the default "(English)" labels 
off of an internationally focused map seems truly backwards.
Whats the deal there?

in OSM we focus on ground truth and having a local (!) community taking care of the data and keeping it in shape.

The standard in OSM is to put the local name of a feature in the name tag. There are exceptions for countries with multiple languages in use or for disputed areas. But typically there is one language and the feature's name in that language is in the name tag.

If the name exists in different languages or there is the need for some romanized writing this is in the respective name:* tags.

Due to the main site's map commitment to the local community and thus displaying each feature in it's local name some people abused the name tag to implement bilingual (local/English) rendering.

This is certainly an abuse as it makes processing the data for various purposes much more difficult. And the decision which name to show on a map is a cartographic decision and should not be made in the data.

As of today there exist many alternatives on how to make a map multi-lingual. My own map is doing this since four years, Mapquest is also showing a local/English naming (world-wide).

So while in principle it's correct to fix the name tag to include only the local name (in your case in Japanese), due to the widespread misuse of the name tag especially in Japan it is a decision of the local community how to go on with it.

Personally I would favor a mechanical edit to rectify the majority of the name tags, then continue with the local/name:* scheme.

But this is a decision which needs to be made by the local community.


You can compare the tagging in other parts of the world which follow this tagging.

For example here:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=9/48.0147/11.5645&layers=Q

it is name=München, name=en=Munich

No local mapper wants to read München (Munich) on the map. So why should Japanese or Chinese mappers want to read something on their map?

The style on osm.org respects local mapper and always shows the local name.
Specific rendering exists for "international" maps. Switch to the mapquest layer and you can read it bi-lingual.

Other maps like that on openstreetmap.de try to show always the German name or a romanized form.


Stephan



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