Language barrier and the default to English puts non-English speakers at a systemic disadvantage throughout open mapping communities and humanitarian open mapping activities resulting in significant missed participation and impact. We held experimentation on language translations of key resources identified by collaborators coming from local OSM communities and we hope to share the findings in this talk.
We believe that language localization will enable inclusion and participation of underrepresented groups in mapping, dialogues and other humanitarian open mapping activities.
We ran small experiments with local contributors to test how localisation of resources could work in the main languages of 3 priority countries (Vietnam, Madagascar, Mozambique) and we hoped its insights would inform a self-sustainable Localization Strategy for these communities and beyond. However, the documented findings are not sufficient due to challenges encountered (including communication and technical barriers, difficulty with monitoring and evaluation, among others) during the course of the research. Hence, opportunities and recommendations will be presented for future work to explore this theme.
OSM Diary post on the launch: https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/arnalielsewhere/diary/397844
