Run job to associate translated common names to places

Many users who add translated common names into the database do not understand that if the name is in a language the site is not translated into, that unless they then associate the name to be used in a place it will have no impact.

There is a long standing request to change the screen where names are added to include this functionality as it is not even there https://github.com/inaturalist/inaturalist/issues/2254

In the meantime there is a backlog of names that have been associated with places that the site is not translated into that this is not set for.

Is it possible to run a database job to add the following pairs as fixing these one at a time by hand (which only curators can do) is extremely time consuming and frustrtaing.

Language -> use in place pairs (if others think of ones I have missed, please contribute them)
Bulgarian - use in Bulgaria
Czech - use in Czech Republic
Slovak - use in Slovakia
Croatian - use in Croatia
Serbian - use in >Serbia
Norwegian - use in Norway
Swedish - use in Sweden
Icelandic - use in Iceland
Polish - use in Poland
Romanian - use in Romania
Slovenian - use in Slovenia
Latvian - use in Latvia
Lithuanian - use in Lithuania
Vietnamese - use in Vietnam
Belarussian - use in Belarus
Ukranian - use in Ukraine

Afrikaans in South Africa.
Metalasia is listed as blombushes, which is clunky.
Blom is Afrikaans for flower, blombos is the common name, in Afrikaans.

Blombushes??

I intentionally only listed unilingual (or nations at least are mainly unilingual). The problem with doing it in a multilingual nation is if you set all the Afrikaans names to be used in South Africa, means :

  • any English speaker in South Africa who sets their names to South Africa to not see US names etc will see the Afrikaans names (the place priority setting is the #1 criteria for determining what name to see, so for instance when I run the site in Danish, I still see any names specified in English for Canada, which is what I have set as my names place, since that takes priority over the Danish name)
  • it locks out any users (not sure how many there might be) of non Afrikaans / non English speakers in South Africa.

There is no great solution for multilingual nations where multiple of the languages are not ones the site is translated into.

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Just to clarify, the order that determines what common name is shown to a user is as follows:
1 - Any name set to explictly be used in a place that the user has specified they want names to be displayed from
2 - If the user has not specified a place priority for their names, the primary name entered in the language the user is running the site in
3 - If there is no name entered in the language the user is running, the default overall taxon name, which is usually the American English one.

One of the site developers will have to answer what happens if more than 1 name is specified to be used in the same place. For instance if someone set both ‘Canada Jay’ and ‘Grey Jay’ to be used in Canada for Perisoreus canadensis. Since there is still a prioritization within that list, I assume that would drive the display (ie which ever was set as the priority name within Canada), and secondly is there any difference in behaviour if multiple names are set within a place if they are in different lexicons.

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That explains why so many Cape Town plants have American names.
My alternative is to choose Africa. But since we live in a mediterranean corner, ‘Africa’ will also bring lots of ‘wrong’ names.

If you select “southern Africa” (not “South Africa”) as your default common name place, you’ll get better results.

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thank you - I will try that option.

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Brazilian Portuguese can be useful?

I can help, contact me for working.

It is not logical to select a country as a place when common names are involved? Surprised that “southern Africa” gives better results.

artifact of an individual’s past curation

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I’m going to close this - it’s gotten 0 votes in four years and we’re working on different functionality to solve the problem.