Flag preset names are unlocalized

[1ec5]

The flags tree has displayNames in English only. This results in a suboptimal experience for users of languages other than English, who have to know the name of the flag in English (or the ISO country code of a national flag). Unlike a brand or operator, a localized flag name is the norm, not the exception.

The way NSI is currently set up, we would basically need to multiply the number of man_made/flagpole entries by the number of supported languages. That would cause every user to see the name of a given flag in every language all at once, because there’s no way to filter an entry by user language, only by geography.

Maybe the project could instead pull the names automatically from the associated flag:wikidata or subject:wikidata QID as an occasional build step, and a data consumer could display only the name that matches the user language? Alternatively, NSI could adopt a localization system similar to the one used by id-tagging-schema – that is, as part of the iD project. But that would be unnecessarily complicated for the other trees, and it’d be busywork for iD translators to retranslate basic things like country names that are already available elsewhere.

/ref #5960 (comment)

[bhousel]

I dunno, I just said I don't want to introduce localization here.
Multiplying the current 384 flags * the current 90ish languages = translation of 34k+ strings, and we're nowhere close to tracking all the flags that people might want to map.

[1ec5]

Right, I agree with you that introducing localization here isn’t great. So how do we solve this problem, either here or in some other project? Should flags move to id-tagging-schema?

[bhousel]

I dont know, there might not be a solution for this. I agree that leveraging the existing translations in Wikidata is the way to go.

Also I dont really have any authority over those other projects anymore, so I think it's time to move on and not think about solving problems there.. I need some time to think about it. (Put another way, it seems pretty clear to me that dumping a load of flags into id-tagging-schema and asking people to translate them all is not the answer).