I’m using iNaturalist with my kids (ages 7 and 10), and it’s very frustrating for them that most of the names, even for very common species, are in English, not Norwegian.
Local names for a very large number of species in Norwegian an many other languages are available in The Encyclopedia of Life (and many other sources). Shouldn’t it be fairly easy to import them into iNaturalist?
with best regards,
Lars N
I dont know if you have figured this out or not, but because the site is not translated into Norwegian, to get any Norwegian names entered to show, there is a setting you need to enable. On the web client, under your drop down icon in the top right, click the arrow and choose Account Settings, about half way down the centre column marked prioritize common names used in this place. Set that to Norway.
Sorry, I would have replied in Norwegian, but you guys spell everything funny (Danish speaker) 
I should add that the display of common names in a desired language also depends on what client you are using. On the web client it seems to work perfectly, I’ve never really seen any issue. On the mobile client it can be inconsistent, and is clearly not fully implemented correctly.
The emails iNaturalist sends are also inconsistent but I agree, they the web version seems to show the correct names.
Did you find out that if you choose ‘Search external name providers’ and search for Norwegian names also add common names?
I can confirm that this works well for the website, I hve set my region to Germany, but the web interface itself to English.
However for the app this does not work very well. After changing the setting on the website one also needs to log out and log in again in the app for the changes to take effect.
but also than it does not work that good. species are often displayed in English and when clicking on them in German …
So if CoL has a common name that is not yet on iNat this will be added to iNat? I will try this the next time I´ll see a name that is missing
Yes. But I still think that it would be better if more common names are added automatically for all languagues in Europe. Maybe a job can be scheduled that adds for each country in Europe the common names for each taxon that occurs in that country if it does not have a common name in iNaturalist.
Yes, I had already set that option.
Best,
LN
The results are the same in the web version. The “Search external name providers” does not help, since it presupposes that we already know the name of the species.
Does Norway have an online biodiversity database / portal like Artdatabanken in Sweden or Allearter in Denmark?
Yes, we have artsdatabanken.no, with links to local names from latin ones. But EOL would be a more general solution.
It is more about the ability to generate an export file. If you can do that, they can be bulk uploaded. I did that for Danish and got about 25000 Danish names added. I then tried the same for Swedish but was told I don’t live in Sweden so my request did not represent legitimate demand.
@larsnygaard - if you can convince the site to run the job, which basically would mean reaching out to @tiwane - I have prepared a bulk load file that has roughly 11,000 common names in Norwegian that can be loaded. Please note the focus is on species which are found in Norway, so it would not cover things around the globe (ie if you want the translation for giraffe etc)
Wow, that’s excellent. I will definitively reach out. But again: EOL has local names for very many species in very many languages, so wouldn’t a batch import from there be the most efficient?
I personally don’t know how to do such an export from EOL. I will post the file on a location with public access later this morning eastern North America time.
@larsnygaard @tiwane - the file can be found here
https://drive.google.com/file/d/15LG-Og9ou-w96rntG1QOEZ_y7EeRxkhb/view?usp=sharing
A reminder that as the site is not translated into Norwegian, the 2nd step of associating these names with the place Norway has to be done for it to have any impact.
The source is https://www.artsobservasjoner.no/ which is the national species reporting portal for Norway.
@larsnygaard - I cant confirm with certainty, but I think the site admins have run the import of the bulk load file of the Norwegian common names, as when you set your use names to Norway and run a query on observed species in Norway, a high percentage now show Norwegian names.
4 posts were split to a new topic: Common name language and place designation
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