OpenStreetMap

JOSM translations status

Posted by josmeditor on 7 June 2018 in English.

We recently added Korean translation thanks to the precious work of Korean contributors, making JOSM available in 36 languages! But does it mean JOSM supports all major languages of the world? Clearly not: For large regions (Middle-East, North Africa, Balkans…), JOSM has not been translated yet in any official language.

If we check the top 20 languages by the number of native speakers, only 11 are supported: This makes Hindi, Arabic and Bengali the most important languages to add.

We need help for this! You can contribute to translations on Launchpad, or share the news!

Discussion

Comment from Warin61 on 8 June 2018 at 00:48

While this it true in terms of the numbers of people, it may not be true for the surface area of the world. Which remaining language would give OSM the best surface coverage rather than the population coverage? And which area of the world, that lacks the native language, has the ‘worst’ OSM data (if that can be reasonable quantified)? Does that area have the technical infrastructure to support effective participation in OSM?

While getting more people able to participate is a worthy goal, most people don’t participate in OSM. Targeting those who would and can participate is a better use of resources? Might be good to look at the participation rates of people in Korea, has it risen since the introduction of the new language? Will that participation remain, or is it a simple peak that dies away?

Comment from Warin61 on 8 June 2018 at 01:09

Take the case of Greenland. While the official language is West Greenlandic (there is Thule, South Greenlandic and East Greenlandic too) all schools teach English and Danish too. I would think the probably increase in OSM participation rates by providing a West Greenlandic translation would be close to 0.

Then you have ‘Western Shara’. That is disputed territory to put it mildly. Maps showing that were (could still be) baned in Morocco … I’d not travel therewith such a map.

Then Mongolia, where navigation is by yurt, not GPS. Most people, out of town, travel from one yurt to another, yurts move! They move to keep the herds at good feed, people travel from one yurt to another to keep in contact and to aid there own navigation. The navigation by yurts would be frowned on by OSMers, yet that is what is done by the locals.

Targeting a translation simply based on the population numbers or area on a map is not a good idea. It can be used as an input but more considerations need to be made.

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