Tokyo 2020 Olympics ~ Japanese to English Business Name Translation ~ a Local Guides Collaboration

[KimberlyAnnG]

While I was in Tokyo with @YasumiKikuchi  & @HimanshiS, one of the things that we noticed, was that many places on Google Maps only show the name in Japanese.  Hamanshi has been working promote English-nization through Local Guides so we had much to talk about!Himanshi, Yasumi & I in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan

At a Hanami (Cherry Blossom) Picnic organized by @Anzu  and attended by 12 total Local Guides, We gathered to enjoy dishes we had each brought to share. Each plate was a delicious bite from the city of Tokyo or Singapore.  We even enjoyed some pizza! I could go on all day about the food because it all delicious, especially the yummy sandwiches brought by @HiroyukiTakisawa  & @Christine_T from Iwate! 😋

While we ate, we chatted about what we wanted to do with Local Guides.  One of the Guides from Japan, Javier Luna (please tag him if you can), spoke with me and we discussed the editing of Google Maps in Japan. Javier is a level 10, he has over 200,000,000 views! 😲

One of the issues we discussed was the fact that edits they make in Japan sometimes take a long time to show up on  Maps (months!) and yet an edit that I made to add the English name to Odaiba Pier was live within the hour. I have no idea why, possibly because I'm US based and have done enough edits??  That's my guess.

With the 2020 Olympic Summer games coming to Tokyo, the world will be traveling there.  Having English names to correctly and professionally name each place, will make those places much more attractive to any English-speaking tourists that will attend.

This kind of information can make a big difference for a small business. There are so many small businesses in Japan and they are a treasure! It would be a shame if people were to miss out on the chance to experience Deep Japan as I did simply because they could not read the name.

Our proposal is this. To have English speaking Local Guides such as myself who are able to affect an immediate update to Google Maps work in collaboration with our Japanese speaking Local Guide friends like Yasumi.

Together we can figure out what the best name for the place should be.  

I think that this could all be done remotely from a mobile or computer at home, communicating through Facebook Messenger or whatever platform you choose.  To agree on an English name that is as accurate as possible. Once a name is agreed upon, both the Japanese and the English speaking Local Guide would each submit the exact same edit.

This would ensure that the edit was verified and should speed up the process of it going live on Maps.  The more edits you have done, the quicker they should appear.

The trick is to find more Local Guides interested in participating!  

Tokyo is a massive city.  2,187.66 km2 (844.66 sq mi)  compared to my home city of San Jose, California 467.5 km² (180 sq mi).  Tokyo is also far more densely populated than San Jose. Many more businesses and many of them are small.  This is an Olympian size job!!!

We need your help Local Guides!!!!!  

This is Himanshi, Yasumi & my proposal. We are looking to coordinate Local Guides on either side of the language barrier that are interested in participating.  Himanshi is working on details to coordinate to club it as offline effort to the Englishnization overall campaign.

Let's help insure that Tokyo 2020 is the BEST Summer Olympics!  The entire city is getting ready so Local Guides and Google Maps should do the same!

If you would like to join my initiative, please comment here!  I will contact you will the details of how you can help once we have a group to work on this!  I NEED your Connect name here if you want to be included.

#LetsGuide 😊

[KimberlyAnnG]

@YasumiKikuchi has kindly done a Japanese translation of what I wrote:

東京２０２０オリンピックに向け日本の地点名に英訳を追加

日本ローカルガイドとの共同作業

キンバリー・グラハム

　

　東京でヤスミさん、ヒマンシさんと共に行動して気が付いたことは、グーグルマップ登録地点の多くが日本語表記しかされておらず、英語の登録が少なかったことです。これまでもヒマンシさんは、ローカルガイド活動を通じて英語化の促進に取り組んで来ました。

アンズさん主催のお花見には１２人のローカルガイドが集まり、それぞれが持ち寄った料理やお菓子をシェアして楽しみました。東京とシンガポールの味をどれも美味しく頂きました。ピザも楽しみました！ぜんぶ美味しかったので一日中楽しめたでしょう。特にヒロユキさんとクリスティーンさんが岩手から買って来たコッペパンが美味しかった！

私たちは食事を楽しみながら、ローカルガイドとして何をやってみたいか話し合いました。そして日本ガイドの一人であるハビエル（ルナ）さんと日本のグーグルマップの編集について議論しました。彼はレベル１０で２億人を超える写真ビュー記録があります！

私たちが議論した問題の一つは、日本で行った編集が地図へ適用されるのにしばしば長い時間がかかるという事実です。とはいえ私が編集した「Odaiba Pier（お台場桟橋）」は１時間以内に適用されました。なぜ違いがあるのかわかりません。推測では私がアメリカで十分に編集活動を行っている（英語圏での実績がある）ガイドだからかもしれません。

　東京で２０２０が始まれば、世界が集結します。それぞれの地点に正しい英語が表記されることで、英語を話す旅行者にとってはるかに魅力的な場所となるでしょう。

この種の情報は小売店にとって大きな違いを生み出す可能性があります。日本にはとても多くの小売店があり、それらは宝物です！名前を読めなかったという理由だけで、私が体験したようなディープジャパンの機会を逃すなら残念なことでしょう。

　私たちの提案は以下の通りです。グーグルマップへ迅速な更新ができる英語圏のネイティブなローカルガイドと、ヤスミさんのような日本語圏のローカルガイドの友人がコラボーレーションすることです。一緒に行動することで最良の英訳が何かを把握することができます。

これらは全て、自宅に居ながらスマートフォンやPCからＳＮＳを使って遠隔で実行可能です。できるだけ正確な、ネイティブな英訳名に同意をします。合意したなら、日本語圏と英語圏のガイドの両方が全く同じ編集を行います。

それにより編集内容の検証が確認され、迅速なマップ適用が実現します。あなたがより多く編集したのであれば、早く適用されるべきなのです。

秘訣は、参加することに興味があるローカルガイドを多く見つけることです！

　東京は大都市です。私の故郷のカリフォルニア州サンノゼ（シリコンバレーの一部）に比べ、東京は2,187.66km²、サンノゼは467.5km²です。東京はサンノゼよりもはるかに人口が密集しています。ずっと多い東京のビジネス、そして多くは小売店です。オリンピックサイズの仕事です！！

私たち外国人は、ローカルガイドの力を必要としています！！

これはヒマンシさんとヤスミさん、そして私の提案です。言語の壁の両側から協賛に関心のあるローカルガイドをコーディネートしようとしています。

２０２０が最高のオリンピックであることを保証しましょう！東京は準備が進んでいるので、ローカルガイドとグーグルマップも同様に準備を行いましょう！

#LetsGuide😊

[Kwiksatik]

This is so important! What an amazing cause to forward @KimberlyAnnG!!! I'm commenting to help if I can, and to give you all the kudos for such an important cause! The first thing I do in foreign places is open maps and look around! Have you considered making a list of the places you visited there that you would reccomend? Maybe a "Great Places to get you through Tokyo"? I'd cling to that list like a life-raft!

[PaulPavlinovich]

It's a good idea but I'd suggest using the LG team to make a contact within the Maps or GMB teams to facilitate a bulk update.

If you try to edit places en masse that you've not been too especially as a group you're likely to trigger spam protection and lower your trust score. 

[AdrianLunsong]

I love the cause but I don't feel that Local Guides' help will scale well against this Herculean task; it's too manual and needing two Local Guides to push out an edit is not an efficient use of resource. It would be better for Google to work on fixing the turnaround time for edits submitted by Japanese Local Guides so that you don't need to rely on external Local Guides to affect the change. Also, I may be wrong but I have a funny feeling that if we submit edits to places far away that we've never been to, it will get flagged up as a potential abuse.

What about if Google use their Crowdsource app that siphons business names from Maps, translates it automatically and get the public to Accept/Decline the translation. Names that are declined once too many times, will then put into a pool that requires a manual translation. Still resource heavy but I can't of anything that scales well beyond just relying on Google to do the machine learning and applying AI translation. But then, that's out of our hands.

Still love the proposal though and definitely gets my vote!

[KimberlyAnnG]

@PaulPavlinovich no, it wouldn't be a mass editing.

We would work together in teams of two. One Japanese speaking local guide with one English speaking local guide. Only those two would submit the edit.  It will take some coordination but I am willing to do that in order to make this work.

@AdrianLunsong I understand that this is a herculean task that's why I am asking for help. If we don't do anything then there will be even that much less. Anything we can contribute, we should. Even if it doesn't fix every place that needs the help.

I should also remind you that this is not my original idea. There are other people in the Japanese government working on this problem. We're just one small piece.

[Twister411]

I can see that this is labor intensive, but having auto translate might not be the solution as translation engines are not always accurate.

I think it's a nice starting point of increasing updates for foreign travelers.

[KimberlyAnnG]

Okay, it is come to my attention that remote edits aren't going live because of possible security issues.  And that is understandable considering the news from New Zealand recently.  Spam is also a big problem with Maps.  I completely understand that.  

Google Translate is lovely product and we got a lot of use out of it while I was in Japan but both @YasumiKikuchi  and I can testify, it doesn't get it right every time by far. It's helpful but requires a lot of patience to get the correct translation.

A bad translation is worse than no translation in my opinion.

Perhaps the way to go is to collect these name in need of corrections on a spreadsheet with the maps list for the location.  

Collaboration between a Japanese local guide and a fluent English speaking Local Guide could come to a consensus on what the best translation is to English.

Then submit this information to the Google Maps team directly or the Google my business team directly.  I'm sure they have some kind of mechanism to do bulk edits.

In the end, for me it's never been about earning points for the edits. It's all about making Google Maps a useful tool for Olympics tourism in Japan.  And by extension, anyone else that chooses to visit this country.

[HiroyukiTakisawa]

Hi, @KimberlyAnnG 
First, I'm happy you enjoyed the sandwich:-)
 
The translation of place names are very important and we knew it well. Actually, it has already started in each region. For example, the place names in Iwate are being translated by me and some friends. Likewise, I know some people are doing it. I hope more local guides join us, especially in Tokyo.
 
And at the same time, we are considering a guideline for translation in our community. Because the translation from Japanese to English is very complicated and confuse even us:-)

Thank you for your nice advice and perspective!

[KimberlyAnnG]

@HiroyukiTakisawa I did enjoy the sandwich!  That bread was the best I've had in a very long time!  I'll need a link to the bakery where you got them or even just the bread!  When I come back to Japan, I would love to go visit Iwate and have more!

I am glad to hear that you and friends are at work on the problem in Iwate.  That may be related to the project that @HimanshiS was referencing.  The Englishnization project.  That's why I said, this is not my original idea.  Just one I'd like to help with in any way I can!  It is certainly a big job and only a year to get as much done as possible.  And yes!  The translation from Japanese to English can be very very hard!  I think that working together, we could figure it out.  I really enjoyed every second that I spent in Japan and would like everyone else that visits to enjoy it the same.