Correcting foreign place names on Google Maps

[#1]

I find it particularly irritating that I, a translator of Arabic, when I correct the way a place is named on GoogleMaps, find that the suggestion either lingers unaccepted for months or is rejected.

Many place/site names in Arabic are wrong on Google Maps. 

One example is the name of mosques or hospitals. In Arabic a mosque/hospital might be named after someone or a concept, e.g. Mustashfa al-Baraka, should be translated as the Baraka Hospital and not Hospital of Blessing (the literal translation).

Of course googlemaps seems to resist providing any direct email or way of contacting a real person, as opposed to a machine.

My suggestion is that people with a demonstrable knowledge of another language, and who have contributed much, should be offered a fast-track method of correcting place/site names, so that places such as Madrasat al-Shaghaf, for example, appears as al-Shaghaf School and not the School of Distress!

[JanVanHaver]

Hello @rvondeh are all of those translation-correction edits you submit denied or do some get approved?

By the way: I have already come across some hilarious automatic translation errors for Dutch as well (where the original Dutch company name indeed also contained the name of the owner, which was then translated into the English word for part of that person's name), so the problem is not only there for Arabic.

[rvondeh]

JanVanHaverThe translation-correction edits simply remain as "pending".  If there was a direct approval method, I could correct many more!

R

[Andy-Stewart]

I agree with your observation.  I am relatively new to contributing, but it hasnt taken long to detect incorrect spelling (English language UK) or errors in gramatic conventions.  I wouldnt change what I am not 100% positive about, but it is annoying when the Edit is rejected, when the original Create was wrong.  I recently came across a created place in Scotland named in another language (it was an Outlander TV series location; not even a real place) so after researching the TV show, I just added the Translation in English for the TV location.  Is it a possability that someone has created a place in their native language and then used Google Translate to name in the local language?

[King_of_Sleep]

I don't know Arabic enough but I have heard that Google Translate is not a very good translator for Spanish either.
I've been recommended Wordreference.com  for Spanish. Maybe you could take a look at it and see if it stands true for Arabic.

If so, the Google Team behind Google Translate should look at WordReference and adopt their corrections.

[JanVanHaver]

@rvondeh if they are pending, this often means that the algorithm awaits confirmation by other local guides that are using the Check the Facts module. Every one of those that gets approved might improve your trust score for name edits, so my advice would be: continue submitting them, and after a while your suggestions should get approved quicker. For more info, you can check this post I wrote on the topic a while ago.

And by the way: to mention someone in a reply, type the '@' sign to show a list of people involved in a post and then select the user from that list.

[JanVanHaver]

@Andy-Stewart when people create new places using their phone, it is the language of the OS that determines the language in which Google maps operates. As I have come across errors that seem to be 'systematically' wrong, I suspect Google might be using Google translate to 'force' having an English version of the name - often with mediocre results.

[JanVanHaver]

@King_of_Sleep for Spanish you should definitely also test DeepL translator. Amazing results - not available for Arabic, though.

[IrrPavlova]

Thank you for your feedback, @rvondeh. Can you share some more examples of mistakes in translations so it could be made easier to track?

[VitB]

We are closing this idea as further information was not provided.

If you have more information to add, let us know and we'll re-open the idea.

Thank you for sharing!