The use of the "name" tag across Algeria

Hi,
I was invited in the conversation, in fact I’m editing Waze map most of the time, and ocasionally OSM too as I find that it is complementary.
As I don’t know arabic, I edited everything in french in the beginning.
Then I asked the local community about what they like, and finally I started to rename cities with the french name and the arabic name (Waze doesn’t support localization for map elements).

In fact there are not 2 but 3 languages at least in algeria:

The algerian arabic that most algerian speaks. It is not official arabic, people can speak algerian arabic and not understand the official arabic.

From what I know is that most people speak that algerian arabic everyday.
Old people who went to school before independency can read and write french, but most of the time are unable to read or write arabic.
According to Wikipedia 11 million people older than 5 year understand french. It is a lot but not everybody.
The school is now in arabic so young people can read and write arabic, but university is in french, so educated people unsually speaks french.

After that I don’t know the community of editors of OSM in algeria, but are they able to write arabic ? If not, what is the solution ?
From my experience on Waze, only very few local editors are active, and 90% are working in French (maybe because I created the map in french in the beginning I don’t know).
And in the update requests from end users, 90% are also in french.

Another thing, I don’t know very well the east of the country but it seems arabic is less important there, for a lot of cities you even don’t find the arabic name on Wikipedia.

thanks

Hi again :slight_smile:

I also just noticed that if you download Tunis’s offline map on Android OSMand app, you can see that if you use only Arabic on a map, it displays correctly, but if you use a combination of French and Arabic, the Arabic part shows those ugly rectangles.

See for yourselves :

If it was for me, I will only use Arabic in *name *tag, French in name:fr and I will even make an effort to add name:ber even if I really don’t speak Berberian. If only I have a decent internet … :frowning:

East or west, they’re all the same. The lack of Arabic translations in Wikipedia does not reflect our interest to our language, it simply reflects our disinterest to online voluntary contributions (and that because of a lot of other reasons), if I may say.

Our dialect is a mixture of Arabic and French, and I can guaranty that 99% of educated people (not to brag, but me being one of them in an educative environment) you are talking about can perfectly understand Arabic as well as French.

Cordially.

I have to admit, one thing that surprised me when I looked at the map in Algeria was the lack of “name:fr” in some places where the “name” is in French - having it also in name:fr would make it easier for multilingual maps to recognise the language of the “name” tag (this was based by having a look at nodes with various tags using Overpass in part of Algeria - http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/9V4 - change the

node["name:fr"]({{bbox}});

part of the query to “name:ar” or “name:ber” to see other languages).

Unfortunately the layers available on the openstreetmap.org front page don’t easily allow the selection of map tiles showing different languages, though it is possible to create your own using something like the instructions at https://switch2osm.org/serving-tiles/manually-building-a-tile-server-14-04/ and then use a bit of browser trickery to insert those tiles in place of one of the layers on osm.org - http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:SomeoneElse/Your_tiles_from_osm.org).

A number of different OSM regions have created maps “in their own style” and their own language - if you look at the map at openstreetmap.de for example you’ll see German names for places in central Europe that have many names in different languages. If anyone would like to try and render Algerian map tiles showing name:ar, name:ber or name:fr locally it should be possible on a regular PC, since Algeria doesn’t have a huge amount of data in it in OSM, though obviously hosting that somewhere that other people can see it would involve some ongoing expense. If anyone wants to try and set up a tile server for a particular language please ask (either me directly, or on help.openstreetmap.org, or on IRC http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/IRC).

  • I agree with Sandervalya about using bi-lang or tri-lang depending on the region. Even going far using single language, exactly the local spoken language used in the street (Arabic or Berber), same as locals call the place.

If we can’t come up with an agreement, may be we should leave name tag empty? Let the end user choose what to use. (Anyway, most gonna use name:en as fallback)

  • Okey with hiddeneyes02 about 1st official language is Arabic, but French is wide spread in Business/Educational system. We should get benefit of both and any language in-use locally.

  • Somehow disagree with Algebre_gama, I used to work with free/open source software dev. These are two separate projects. I think we should avoid solving a bug in a front-end like osmand by changing the whole back-end OSM database. That fonts rendering bug will be resolved sooner or later. OSM database should filled in a way, easy to use and be useful for any time (it’s a long term project with many contributors).

Hi,

So what’s the solution ?

Please use arabic name in tag “name:” instead of only french name, butterflyoffire please don’t clean arabic name in tag “name:” , thanks.

Use name:ar, name:fr, the spoken arabic is a mix of amazigh and arabic. Abdjelalil you look more royalist then the king, i keep using latin alphbaet for names,

Hi,
SomeoneElse was writing to us on behalf of OSM’s Data Working Group and not on behalf of the Algerian Government that never opened data to public. SomeoneElse noticed that there is a problem in the algerian OSM Map.

Link : http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/FR:Data_working_group

Now, I have to replay to our friend abdeldjalil : I’m against all the double names separated by a “-” in the tag “name:” but I’m okay to submit a request to the OSM Working Data Group to study this case.
Last time I was reading something about ISO2 and ISO3 concerning “naming”, sorting and filtering.

Abdeldjalil, I contribute to name the places that I know more in arabic, don’t worry I’m even okay to write the name of all the villages and POI’s in japanese, this is not a problem.
I think that it’s okay to name some places in arabic using the generic tag “name:” but other places and POI’s doesn’t actually have an “arabic” name but can be only transliterated into arabic.

Now, I have to add something that may be seem “bizarre” but, if one day, we have to push the OSM algerian map to be adopted as an OpenGov plateform (leaf) I’m sorry to say that everything must be written in arabic … and here I agree with you.

Yes I contribute in arabic using “name:ar” but everywhere else I use latin … may some OSM Contributors add “name:ar” to all the POI’s we’ve created before :

This is a “Kabyle” land and the name of every village is written in latin in the real world but I added “name:ar” may be “someone else” will take benefit of the arabic tagging. Why not ? I’m not against.

This Kabyle area has a “name:ar” and no “name:ber”

But I’m against naming like this : “الطاهير - Taher” or even more “الطاهير Taher” or tri-naming in arabic-dash-french-dash-berber.

Because if we consider OSM as a big database then name:fr=Taher is corresponding to name:ar=الطاهير and never a “mix-humburger” of names is corresponding to a single name written in an ISO standardized language.

To avoid what we call “War Map Edits”, I was asking … So what’s the solution ?
an ar.openstreetmap.org like Wiki is doing ? Will you name all the chinese villages in arabic ?
A Leaf server hosted is Algeria ? A good Idea (the best) but who is gonna host it ? Algeria Telecom ? Not even in your dreams ! None is supporting the movement of Free Open Source Software here !

Yes I have already read this : http://blog.jochentopf.com/2012-06-24-choosing-a-language.html

Edit August 27th, 2015 :

Signalisation routière bilingue (wiki fr) : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalisation_routi%C3%A8re_bilingue
Bilingual sign (wiki en) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilingual_sign

Jochen Topf

I think, latin alphabet should be a fallback and the user must be free to render/filter/sort using a name:iso if he wants since there still a problem in displaying a “mixed lang. name” in some plateformes such as Android (square caracters).

In the future, to propote berber language over all the territories of Algeria, the administration will show the locations in tri lingual names. Do you imagine the length of “name:” tag ?
There will be even War Edits to have “name:” first name in arabic, then berber, then fr. Other contributor will come to revert them to : Berber, Arabic, then french. So the problem is not yet solved.

Have a nice day … and fun on OSM :wink:
Salutations amicales.

ButterflyofFire , levacher why ??? In tag name : , other country use local name exemple middle east and tunisia in arabic, russia in russian , china in chinese , but algeria why you using french ??? French is not official language in algeria, please use arabic in tag name: , in algeria. :rage: :rage:

May be Algeria is an exception :wink: ? Algeria is not a Middle Eastern Country :wink: It is North African and a World Centered country in the 2D Map. It is not our fault if there are only “latin alphabet” contributors in OSM DZ Map. We are doing our best to “name:ar” but we have a lot much work in drawing streets and pointing POI’s then to name them. And as you noticed, even the administration is not naming 99% of the algerian streets (tertiary, residential, local) so we are naming them as we know them locally “Abrid n SONELGAZ” in kabyle or زريبة سونلغاز in arabic.

Salut.

But Tunisia is used again arabic name in tag “name:” not only middle east

Hi,

Okay Abdeldjalil, as an OSM Contributor in Béjaïa, I’ll try to revert the tag “name:” into arabic … but I’ll do it only for all what is inside Béjaïa administrative boundary.
But I wonder what will be the result in an exported map for OSMAnd+ or Skobbler Maps and Nav … I hope that nothing will go wrong with the display of arabic caracters, because reverting again to latin will be a hard work to do. I don’t know either if the “search field” will not be affected. Be sûre that none will gonna search a location in Béjaïa by typing it in arabic. I hope that all the POI’s will be imported with the other “name:lang” tags elsewhere, the map will not be usefull for navgation on mobile devices unless it is a customised extract.

So, Béjaïa is under arabisation guys (Beta). Please don’t revert. From now on I’ll use “name:in arabic” in addition to latin caracters n “name:fr”, “name:en”, “name:kab”, “loc_name”.

Who is gonna help me ?

By the way I’ll use :

Most of communal roads have no name and generally not standardised : “طريق بلدي رقم 99”. In this case I’ll use the local name “Abrid n Zountar” or “Avrid n Zountar” since “b” is pronounced “v” in kabyle language.
instead of Chemin de wilaya (CW) : Cannot use (طو) since طو is used for National Roads (Tariq Watani). In Tunisia they use “Tariq Jihawi” طج (RR Route Régionale). What do you expect us to put instead ?
instead of Route nationale (RN) : طو (Tariq Watani)
instead of (Autoroute) : طس (Tariq Sari3)

All this should be standardised in the Wiki :

The english project : http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/En:WikiProject_Algeria
In french : http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/FR:WikiProject_Algeria
In arabic : http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Ar:WikiProject_Algeria

By the way, I was preparing a draft wiki page for national roads in algeria … I’ll throw it away so ! huh !
Link : http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:ButterflyOfFire/sandbox/routes_nationales_alg%C3%A9riennes

See ya !

Edit 28/08/2015 - 12:56 GMT+1 : I started over here = https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/36.6040/4.6463

Edit à 13:39 : It’s amazing how arabic is rendered on the tiles ! WTF ! (Look at the tag “Ref” rendered in CW and in “Taw” on the National Road N26).

OSM is not an algerian service, so keep your junk logic aND YOUR ARABIC johad for yourself, stop harassing me and commenting my work, you better immigrate to saudi arabia, you are obsessed or what?you never map, you just comment other mappers…you saudi harki
Tu me les casses toi et ton arabisation de boumedienne, you are worse then oqba! i will not surrender

Just to address the last point - OSM is a service by everyone and for everyone. As I said at the top of the thread, there’s no need for the “name” tag to have the same language across a country, and no reason why the name has to be in a certain character set.

The arabic alphabet does not transcript the right pronunciation of the names…most of the names of cities are in amazigh language, the arabic language is official since 1962…Please Butterfly, do not change your mind or culture because abdmachin is harrassing you, he focuses on bejaia, he does not map, he just keeps changins our work and reverting the names. he thinks he is fighting against the french…french or arabic are both imported and imposed languages…
He keeps repeating tunisia, why not using amazigh as morrocco? abdmachin suffers from amazighophobia

I’m clearing this post.

People do not care about mapping but just about official names…

I’m not quitting OSM, I edited my last post.
Yep, Some people are not mapping, they care only about “names” and reverting everything to arabic.

Please try to be a positive contributor. There are only 15 daily mappers in the Algerian map. “Only 15” !
Link : http://osmstats.neis-one.org/?item=countries&country=Algeria

If you carry on “War Edits”, I have to notify OSM to block temporarily edits in the algerian map.
Abdeljalil, try don’t interfere with my contributions in Béjaïa. The wiki of OSM is not a “Coran”, the admin level of the communes should be admin_level=8 and not as it is “proposed” in the Wiki.
Have you ever tried to add a contribution to the Wiki … You did not ! I do ! And I read this table :

Link : http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:boundary%3Dadministrative#10_admin_level_values_for_specific_countries
And I opened a subject here : http://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=33844
Titled : “Organizing boundaries and admin_level tags for Algeria OSM Map.” and and had no comment from anyone.

Why you revert from admin_level 8 to 7 ? Just because it is “proposed” on the Wiki ? You’re wrong !

And “fuck” ! After all ! We should have fun on OSM and avoid “War Edits” ya zah !

En plus SomeOneElse ta3 zebbi zad lna had a sujet ta3 chkoupi bache y dir lna guira ya zah* !
Koul wahed y mapi el jiha elli ya3rafha … be el lougha Ech’koupistania wella Ezzetlania, el finiqiya … Mappiw les village w troq, w koul wahed w yetnak m3a la région ta3o sinon ma nakhlasouche men had a sujet.

Levacher 3andou el haq, wenta ya Abdeljalil 3andek el haq … Ma twelliwche les représentant du gouvernement en ligne. Mappiw b la façon elli ta3arfouha … tebqa el mouchkila hadi ta3 le tag “name” ta3 zebbi … ma trevertiw ma walou ! Pour le moment, on fait la paix … on contribue à dessiner les millions de kilomètres qui reste fi blad Ch’koupistène … quant au noms koul wahed yetnak.

Aya sahitou 3la el 3aqliya algérienne même sur OSM. Oui l’Algérie n’est pas arabe, oui l’Algérie est une création française … oui nous parlons tout les dialects berbère et l’administration utilise le français et l’arabe bien que le français n’est ni une langue nationale ni officielle … alors arrêtons de nous saper le moral avec un sujet débile comme celui là jusqu’à ce qu’une solution soit trouvée pour une carte multilingue et là chacun, comme un mouton se pliera aux règles du tag “name”.

Je vous souhaiterez quand même une bonne journée les gars ! Je vous remercie pour vos contributions passées et futures … alors continuons à mapper, les futures générations auront besoin de ce travail énorme que font “15 personnes” sur la carte ouverte d’Algérie.

Sahitou !

Je suis dorénavant connu CV comme Abu jahl…el fahem yefham…keep calm and continue mapping
Levacher