Hello, dear etajin.

You add many Japanese names in Russia (for example, for villages) [1]. It’s bad idea because Russian villages have no Japanese names. But, for example, the capital of Russia Moscow has Japanese name. In Russia there is no Japanese community which could use the Japanese names. Please, read wiki page [osm.wiki/Names].

Avoid transliteration

Transliteration is the process of taking a name in one language, and simply changing letters from one script to another. In general we should avoid doing this with tags in the OpenStreetMap database. Everything with a name could have auto-generated transliterations, so not just city names, but every road, and every cafe! This kind of automatic augmenting with data is best left for data users. For example, Sven Geggus has demonstrated the principle of rendering with auto-generated transliterations. We want to avoid adding in tags into our database for every named object via automated or semi-automated Import.

Instead we only put commonly used names in other languages into the database. While we typically think of these as translations, in most cases names that fit this criteria are not literal translations, example: the lake that the city of Geneva lies on is in French (Geneva is a French speaking city) Lac Leman, in German Genfersee. These are names which have been used by people on the ground, speaking in different languages (In general we’re following Good practice#Map what’s on the ground)

For example, small towns in England probably don’t have a special Russian name, unless there is a local Russian community or something. Their names can all be transliterated into Russian script, but it’s not a good idea to add lots and lots of tags to all the towns in England containing these transliterated names.

Also you ignore questions and comments from Russian contributors [2,3]. Please, answer, when there are questions for you.

Vladimir Marshinin
Data Working Group

1. osm.org/changeset/38090856
2. osm.org/changeset/37622730
3. osm.org/changeset/37435785