Hello,

I've been watching for a few months the wonderful development that has been performed for map internationalization, especially on the Wikimedia toolserver.

I've been then looking for tools dedicated to this huge task: provide localities name in specific languages, but so far I found nothing.

Nominatim tool is now in service and it provides very accurate results for placenames, especially when administrative boundaries are properly defined. I wonder if Nominatim could be modified, or used as base to elaborate a translation dedicated tool.

This is the way I imagine it:

_ User considers that he's able to translate placenames in a specific language (e.g. fr for French) and therefore selects this language in a dialog box

_ User selects a place name, of a specific admin_level (e.g. Germany, which corresponds to a level 2 admin_level)

_ Search tool could then return placenames with level 3 (or 4 if 3 is actually not used) admin_level, that have "Germany" as parent administrative area -> For Germany, this should return the list of the Federal states (Länder), and as far as possible limit results to this, in order to proceed step by step (first translate country names, then states, ..., cities, streets and amenities, etc ...)

_ Biggest modification, compared to Nominatim results, is that they would be provided in two columns First column returning default name, and a second column used to 1. show names already translated in the language chosen by user (see above) 2. Propose an automated translation (e.g. based on wikipedia contents), for review and correction 3. allow fill-in of the names translated by user, or allow him to confirm that translation is not required 4. upload the translations / modifications performed by user in a single changeset

I guess that this would limit the technical skills required for this translation task to a minimum, and This requires that administrative boundaries are properly set-up, for cleaner results, but this is a task that needs to be achieved anyway !

I am fairly new to OSM and have limited (if any) programming skills. Don't take it too bad that I'm only able of bringing raw ideas on the table, and not able of develop them by myself ! :-)

Cheers and merry Xmas !! -- ab_fab