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Marrakesh, Marrakech or Mərrākš? that is: English rule, French (colonizer's), or phonetic of how locals call the place?

sometimes there are nameplates in latin script that help choose (but each of them might give a different transliteration).

sometimes you have to ask and decide yourself, as for the many "buyba"s (small city gate) which have a name only in the mouth of people.

what do most mappers do and what is considered good practice?

I think that the core of my question is on whether we have an agreement on which transliteration to use. check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Arabic. do we follow UNGEGN?

asked 01 Sep '11, 11:08

mariotomo's gravatar image

mariotomo
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edited 01 Sep '11, 14:45


I say you should not translate arabic names into latin names. There are many ways to do this and as I understand it can be done by a computer. When you translate the names you loose information.

You can also use name:en, name:fr.

permanent link

answered 01 Sep '11, 13:00

Gnonthgol's gravatar image

Gnonthgol ♦
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accept rate: 16%

1

Use all variants as values for correct tags (name:en...)

(01 Sep '11, 14:33) LM_1

I did take notes in the local script, but actually a correct transliteration of an arabic name holds more information (vocalization) than the arabic form. think of درب (darb): the short vocal in the latin is absent in the original form.

(01 Sep '11, 14:38) mariotomo
7

I'm not sure you understand the concept : the main map is rendered by Mapnik and is displaying the tag "name", whatever the content is. Our convention is to say that the tag 'name' is the local language, so using normally the arabic font, syntax, grammar, rules, etc for an arabic place. In your example, use the tag 'name:en' for Marrakesh in english and 'name:fr' for Marrakech in french but don't put phonetics in the tag name (or we have to create a new tag 'name:phonetic' which does not exist today).

(01 Sep '11, 16:39) Pieren
3

Unfortunatelly, many place names in asia or arabic countries have been added in OSM by non-native contributors. That's why we still see many places in OSM where the local alphabet and syntax is not in the primary 'name' tag (or even worse, many are in dual language local+english which is also wrong).

(01 Sep '11, 16:39) Pieren

thanks in particular for pointing out that phonetics belong to the still non existing 'name:phonetic' tag. sticking to the example of Morocco, there most street and place plates hold the Arabic and French forms. do I put both in name and/or one in name:ar and the other in name:fr?

(02 Sep '11, 13:13) mariotomo

Phonetic would be also language dependent. In this case name and name:ar should be the same.

(02 Sep '11, 13:21) LM_1
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question asked: 01 Sep '11, 11:08

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last updated: 02 Sep '11, 13:21

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