Bird common names are all in German(?) in a project CSV export

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Platform: Website

Browser: Firefox

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/lincoln-university-campus-bird-surveys

Screenshots of what you are seeing (instructions for taking a screenshot on computers and mobile devices: https://www.take-a-screenshot.org/):

Description of problem (please provide a set of steps we can use to replicate the issue, and make as many as you need.):

Step 1: Click the “Export with Hidden Coordinates” link (if project admin or have similar access to the project) at https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/lincoln-university-campus-bird-surveys

Step 2: Open downloaded CSV file

Step 3: Puzzle at why all of the taxon names in the common_name column are in German. For example, the house sparrow is Haussperling, Eurasian blackbird is Amsel, and Eurasian song thrush is Singdrossel. Even the New Zealand fantail comes through as Neuseelandfächerschwanz.

This is oddly inconsistent as when I do the same download from https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/ecol202-backyard-birds, I get English names in the common_name column.

My language setting is English and there’s no language setting in the project settings. Both are traditional projects.

Likely related to: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/checklists-download-in-random-languages-despite-no-changes-to-settings-seen-in-the-taxon-common-name-field/10980

1 Like

Thanks @tiwane ,

Yes, that looks like the same issue. I didn’t find that page in my initial search.

It’s odd that it affects only some projects.

It’s not a big deal. However, in this case, it’s tripped up a class exercise I do with university students. I have them pick a species name from the dataset to practice their analysis. I’ve had to switch to picking scientific names this year because the common names are all coming through in German, which are just as unfamiliar to the students as the scientific names.

Cheers.

All good!

The issue was looked at quite a bit, but is proving to be fairly complex: https://github.com/inaturalist/inaturalist/issues/2688

1 Like

see existing bug report: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/checklists-download-in-random-languages-despite-no-changes-to-settings-seen-in-the-taxon-common-name-field/10980