OpenStreetMap Forum

westnordost

Member

From: Hamburg

Registered: 2013-07-13

Posts: 673

Internationalized Tag dictionary

I wonder, is there a tag dictionary that translates OSM tag combinations (of primary features) into i18n names and the other way round?

Ideally as a Java Maven dependency, ready to deploy?

I mean, obviously, iD, JOSM, Maps.ME, Osmand, OSM website etc. pp. all have i18n for tag combinations somehow, the question is, is everybody doing their own thing or is there some central project where i18n is done?

Last edited by westnordost (2017-01-03 22:20:16)

R0bst3r

Member

Registered: 2015-04-23

Posts: 686

Re: Internationalized Tag dictionary

Looks like everybody is doing his own thing, although some tools try to use at least presets from other tools.

iD
https://www.transifex.com/ideditor/id-editor/
JOSM
https://josm.openstreetmap.de/wiki/Translations
Maps.me
https://github.com/mapsme/omim/wiki
...

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OSM Profis sollten Anfänger mehr ermuntern und mehr unterstützen, damit die Gemeinschaft wächst und vielfältiger wird. Momentan vergrault man immer noch gerne.

westnordost

Member

From: Hamburg

Registered: 2013-07-13

Posts: 673

Re: Internationalized Tag dictionary

Thank you R0bst3r.

It is a shame that this does not exist, so the situation did not change since I last looked almost 3 years go. As far as I looked, it seems that all three have the localization of map features interwoven with their other internationalization and thus also in the format that fits to their use cases. I.e. it seems like Maps.ME's translations are not for OSM features directly, but for "categories", the things that actually turn up on their map.
It is a shame because with new tags constantly being conceived and put into usage, I think there should be one central place to contribute translations to and where all OSM projects can profit from. Specifically, a dictionary that a programmer can ask

dictionary.getLocalizedName( sefOfOsmTags, myLocale )

in order to refer to it in some GUI element.

I guess the most reusable might be the translations from iD, since it aims to avoid confronting the user with actual OSM tags the most.

Because I did not find such a project back then, I actually thought of a scheme how this internationalization (of primary map features, that is) could look like.
The scheme I compassed is like this (snippet). It's YAML, but could be JSON as well *shrug*:

amenity= :
  animal_boarding : Tierpension
  animal_shelter :
    - Tierheim
    - Tierasyl
  atm :
    - Geldautomat
    - Bankomat
    - Bankautomat
    - Bancomat
  bicycle_parking :
    - Fahrradständer
    - bicycle_parking= :
        shed : Fahrradschuppen
        building : Fahrradparkhaus
        lockers : Fahrradboxen

You see it is hierarchical and would allow different hierarchies for each different localization, i.e. if there is no word in your language for "Fahrradparkhaus", it is intended to fall back on the next less generic word "Fahrradständer". I actually wrote a fully functioning parser in Java for this.
But when I started StreetComplete, I left this lying around. As I am now slowly getting into the position again where I would need such a thing, I am thinking about reactivating it. What do you people think?

One serious drawback of this localization scheme is that I think it is not possible to plug it into i18n platforms such as Transifex due to its hierarchical/dynamic nature.

Last edited by westnordost (2017-01-13 19:50:23)