Tag Archives: google maps

Google introduces many new errors to Taipei-area maps

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What on earth is going on over at Google?

Just last week I had nothing but love for Google Maps because it had finally made some important improvements to its maps of Taiwan. But just a few days later Google went and screwed up its maps again. The names of most of Taipei’s MRT stations are now written incorrectly. In most cases, this is merely a matter of form, with capitalization — and the important designation of MRT — missing. But in more than just a few instances some astonishing typos have been introduced. What’s especially puzzling and irksome about this is that in most of these cases Google Maps swapped good information for bad.

Meow tipped me off in a comment yesterday that “In Google Maps, Jiannan Rd. Station and Gangqian Station become Jianan road station and Ganggian station.”

Here’s a screenshot taken today of some MRT stations in Dazhi and Neihu:

As Meow said, Jiannan is written Jianan, and Gangqian is written Ganggian. What’s more, Dazhi is written Dachi, and Xihu is written His-Hu (Cupertino effect?).

There are now many such errors.

Here’s a screenshot taken last week.
dfd

And here’s the same place today.

As you can see, one of the instances of Jieyunsongjiangnanjing has been removed, which is good. But that’s the end of the good news. Another Jieyunsongjiangnanjing remains. And the one that was removed was replaced by Songjian nanjing station, with Songjiang misspelled and Nanjing and Station erroneously in lower case. And “MRT” is missing too.

It’s not just the station name that was changed, as the switch of one location from the Thai tourism office to the Panamanian embassy shows. (Perhaps both are in the same building.)

Here are some more examples of recently introduced errors.

Luchou should be Luzhou.
screenshot from Google maps showing 'Luchou' for 'Luzhou'

click to see unrotated image

screenshot from Google maps showing 'Sun-yat-sen memorial hall station' for 'Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall Station'

The westernmost station on the blue line is now labeled Tongning. The pain! The pain! It should be Yongning, which is also visible.
screenshot from Google maps showing 'Tongning' instead of 'Yongning'

In perhaps the oddest example, Qili’an, which has been miswritten Qilian for years, has been redesignated Chlian.
screenshot from Google maps showing 'Chlian' instead of 'Qili'an'

Above we saw Gangqian written incorrectly as Ganggian and Minquan written incorrectly as Minguan. Here’s another example of a q being turned into a g: Banqiao has become Bangiao. Even the train station, which is a different rail system than the MRT, has been affected. But the High Speed Rail Station name remains in Tongyong Pinyin, which I most certainly disapprove of but which at least represents the current state of signage in the HSR system.
screenshot from Google maps showing 'Bangiao' instead of 'Banqiao'

Sloppy work, Google. Very sloppy. How could this have happened?

Google improves its maps of Taiwan

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Two years ago when Google switched to Hanyu Pinyin in its maps of Taiwan, it did a poor job … despite the welcome use of tone marks.

Here are some of the problems I noted at the time:

  • The Hanyu Pinyin is given as Bro Ken Syl La Bles. (Terrible! Also, this is a new style for Google Maps. Street names in Tongyong were styled properly: e.g., Minsheng, not Min Sheng.)
  • The names of MRT stations remain incorrectly presented. For example, what is referred to in all MRT stations and on all MRT maps as “NTU Hospital” is instead referred to in broken Pinyin as “Tái Dà Yī Yuàn” (in proper Pinyin this would be Tái-Dà Yīyuàn); and “Xindian City Hall” (or “Office” — bleah) is marked as Xīn Diàn Shì Gōng Suǒ (in proper Pinyin: “Xīndiàn Shìgōngsuǒ” or perhaps “Xīndiàn Shì Gōngsuǒ“). Most but not all MRT stations were already this incorrect way (in Hanyu Pinyin rather than Tongyong) in Google Maps.
  • Errors in romanization point to sloppy conversions. For example, an MRT station in Banqiao is labeled Xīn Bù rather than as Xīnpǔ. (埔 is one of those many Chinese characters with multiple Mandarin pronunciations.)
  • Tongyong Pinyin is still used in the names of most cities and townships (e.g., Banciao, not Banqiao).

I’m pleased to report that Google Maps has recently made substantial improvements.

First, and of fundamental importance, word parsing has finally been implemented for the most part. No more Bro Ken Syl La Bles. Hallelujah!

Here’s what this section of a map of Tainan looked like two years ago:

And here’s how it is now:

Oddly, “Jiànxīng Jr High School” has been changed to “Tainan Municipal Chien-Shing Jr High School Library” — which is wordy, misleading (library?), and in bastardized Wade-Giles (misspelled bastardized Wade-Giles, at that). And “Girl High School” still hasn’t been corrected to “Girls’ High School”. (We’ll also see that problem in the maps for Taipei.)

But for the most part things are much better, including — at last! — a correct apostrophe: Yǒu’ài St.

As these examples from Taipei show, the apostrophe isn’t just a one-off. Someone finally got this right.

Rén’ài, not Renai.
screenshot from Google Maps, showing how the correct Rén'ài (rather than the incorrect Renai) is used

Cháng’ān, not Changan.
screenshot from Google Maps, showing how the correct Cháng'ān is used

Well, for the most part right. Here we have the correct Dà’ān (and correct Ruì’ān) but also the incorrect Daan and Ta-An. But at least the street names are correct.
click for larger screenshot from Google Maps, showing how the correct Dà'ān (and correct Ruì'ān) is used but also the incorrect Daan and Ta-An

Second, MRT station names have been fixed … mostly. Most all MRT station names are now in the mixture of romanization and English that Taipei uses, with Google Maps also unfortunately following even the incorrect ones. A lot of this was fixed long ago. The stops along the relatively new Luzhou line, however, are all written wrong, as one long string of Pinyin.

To match the style used for other stations, this should be MRT Songjiang Nanjing, not Jieyunsongjiangnanjing.
screenshot from Google Maps, showing how the Songjiang-Nanjing MRT station is labeled 'Jieyunsongjiangnanjing Station' (with tone marks)

Third, misreadings of poyinzi (pòyīnzì/破音字) have largely been corrected.

Chéngdū, not Chéng Dōu.
screenshot from Google Maps, showing how the correct 'Chéngdū Rd' is used

Like I said: have largely been corrected. Here we have the correct Chéngdū and Chóngqìng (rather than the previous maps’ Chéng Dōu and Zhòng Qìng) but also the incorrect Houbu instead of the correct Houpu.
screenshot from Google Maps, showing how the correct Chóngqìng Rd and Chéngdū St are used but also how the incorrect Houbu (instead of Houpu) is shown

But at least the major ones are correct.

Unfortunately, the fourth point I raised two years ago (Tongyong Pinyin instead of Hanyu Pinyin at the district and city levels) has still not been addressed. So Google is still providing Tongyong Pinyin rather than the official Hanyu Pinyin at some levels. Most of the names in this map, for example, are distinctly in Tongyong Pinyin (e.g., Lujhou, Sinjhuang, and Banciao, rather than Luzhou, Xinzhuang, and Banqiao).

Google did go in and change the labels on some places from city to district when Taiwan revised their names; but, oddly enough, the company didn’t fix the romanization at the same time. But with any luck we won’t have to wait so long before Google finally takes care of that too.

Or perhaps we’ll have a new president who will revive Tongyong Pinyin and Google will throw out all its good work.

Bing Maps for Taiwan

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The maps of Taiwan put out by GooGle are plagued with errors in their use of Pinyin. But what about that other big company with deep pockets? You know: Microsoft. How good a job does Microsoft’s Bing do with its maps of Taiwan?
map of Taiwan from Bing, showing Wade-Giles place names

I won’t keep y’all waiting: After examining Bing’s maps of Taiwan the two words that came first to mind were incompetent and atrocious.

The country-level map is odd, offering Wade-Giles. And although the use of the hyphen is irregular, I will give Bing points for getting at least Wade-Giles’ apostrophes right. So, although some place names on the map are decades out of date (e.g., Hsin-chuang, Chungli, Chunan, Kuang-fu), at least they’re not horribly misspelled within that system.

It’s at the street level that Bing’s weirdness becomes most apparent. For example, below is part of Bing’s map of Banqiao.

I added the highlighting.

click for larger map

This tiny but representative fragment of the map has not one but four romanization systems:

  • MPS2: Gung Guang, Min Chiuan, Shin Fu (Even within MPS2, none of those should have spaces or extra capital letters.)
  • Hanyu Pinyin: Banqiao (This is the only properly written place name on this map fragment.)
  • Tongyong Pinyin: Jhancian, Sianmin, Sin Jhan
  • Gwoyeu Romatzyh(!): Shinjann (This is the same road as the one marked “Sin Jhan”. In Hanyu Pinyin, which is what officially should be used here, this is written “Xinzhan”.)

A few more points about this small fragment of the map:

  • Wen Hua could be either MPS2 or Hanyu Pinyin, but not Tongyong Pinyin. And it should be Wenhua.
  • Minan is missing an apostrophe. (It should be Min’an.)
  • Banchiao is just wrong, regardless of the system. They were probably going for MPS2 but erroneously used an o instead of a u: Banchiau.
  • Sec 1 Rd should be Rd Sec. 1.
  • Mrt should be MRT.

So that’s four systems, plus additional errors.

There’s much, much more that’s wrong with this than is right. That’s even more evident on a larger map — and that’s without me bothering to mark orthographic problems in the Pinyin (e.g., Wen Hua instead of the correct Wenhua).
click for larger view

Here bastardized Wade-Giles (e.g., “Mrt-Hsinpu” at top, center — and, FWIW, in the wrong location) has been added to the mix, making a total of five different romanization systems, as well as some weird spellings, e.g., U Nung, Win De, Bah De, Ying Sh — and that’s without including my favorite, JRLE, because that one is correct in MPS2 (“Zhile” in Hanyu Pinyin).

The main point is that vast majority of names are spelled wrong. And among the few that are spelled correctly, those that are written with correct orthography can be counted on one hand. So, to the words above (incompetent and atrocious) let me add FUBAR.

The copyright statement lists not only Microsoft but also Navteq. The Taiwan maps on the latter company’s site, however, are different from those on Bing. Navteq’s are generally in Hanyu Pinyin, though almost invariably improperly written (e.g., Tai bei Shi, Ban Qiao Shi). And despite the prevalence of Hanyu Pinyin, they still contain other romanization systems (e.g., Jhong Shan) and outright errors (e.g., Shin Jahn).

So an update from Navteq wouldn’t be nearly enough to fix Bing’s problems, which are fundamental.

Google Translate’s new Pinyin function sucks

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Google Translate has a new function: conversion to Hanyu Pinyin, which would be exciting and wonderful if it were any good. But unfortunately it’s terrible, all things considered.

What Google has created is about at the same level as scripts hobbyists cobbled together the hard way about a decade ago from early versions of CE-DICT. Don’t get me wrong: I greatly admire what sites such as Ocrat achieved way back when. But for Google — with all of its data, talent, and money — to do essentially no better so many years later is nothing short of a disgrace.

To see Google Translate’s Pinyin function in action you must select “Chinese (Simplified)” or “Chinese (Traditional)” — not English — for the “Translate into” option. And then click on “Show romanization”.

For example, here’s what happens with the following text from an essay on simplified and traditional Chinese characters by Zhang Liqing:

談中國的“語”和“文”的問題，我覺得最好能先了解一下在中國通用的語言。中國的主要語言有哪些？為甚麼我說這個，而不說那個？因為環境？因為被強迫？因為我愛這個語言？因為有必要？因為這個語言很重要？也想想什麼是中國人的共同語言。用一個共同語言有必要嗎？為什麼？別的漢語的去向會怎麼樣？如果你使用中國的共同語言普通話，你了解這個語言的語法（比如“的， 得， 地“ 和“了” 的不同用法）嗎？ 知道這個語言的基本音節（不包括聲調）只有408個嗎？

screenshot of Google Translate with the text above

Google Translate will produce this:
screenshot of Google Translate with the text above and how Google Translate puts this into Pinyin (see text below)

tán zhōng guó de“yǔ“hé” wén” de wèn tí， wǒ jué de zuì hǎo néng xiān liǎo jiè yī xià zài zhōng guó tōng yòng de yǔ yán。zhōng guó de zhǔ yào yǔ yán yǒu nǎ xiē？wéi shèn me wǒ shuō zhè ge， ér bù shuō nà gè？yīn wèi huán jìng？yīn wèi bèi qiǎng pò？yīn wèi wǒ ài zhè ge yǔ yán？yīn wèi yǒu bì yào？yīn wèi zhè ge yǔ yán hěn zhòng yào？yě xiǎng xiǎng shén me shì zhōng guó rén de gòng tóng yǔ yán。yòng yī gè gòng tóng yǔ yán yǒu bì yào ma？wèi shé me？bié de hàn yǔ de qù xiàng huì zěn me yàng？rú guǒ nǐ shǐ yòng zhōng guó de gòng tóng yǔ yán pǔ tōng huà， nǐ liǎo jiě zhè ge yǔ yán de yǔ fǎ（bǐ rú“de， de， de“ hé“le” de bù tóng yòng fǎ） ma？zhī dào zhè ge yǔ yán de jī běn yīn jié（bù bāo kuò shēng diào） zhǐ yǒu408gè ma？

Here’s what’s wrong:

  • This is all bro ken syl la bles instead of word parsing. (So it’s never even a question if they get the use of the apostrophe correct.)
  • Proper nouns are not capitalized (e.g., zhōng guó vs. Zhōngguó).
  • The first letter in each sentence is not capitalized.
  • Punctuation is not converted but remains in double-width Chinese style, which is wrong for Pinyin.
  • Spacing around most punctuation is also incorrect (e.g., although a space is added after a comma and a closing parenthesis, there’s no space after a period or a question mark. See also the spacing or lack thereof around quotation marks, numerals, etc.)
  • Because of lack of word parsing, some given pronunciations are wrong.

In my previous post I complained about Google Maps’ unfortunately botched switch to Hanyu Pinyin. I stated there that, unlike Google Maps, Google Translate would correctly produce “Chengdu” from “成都” (which it does when “translate into” is set for English). But I see that the romanization bug feature of Google Translate also fails this simple test. It generates the incorrect “chéng dōu”.

All of this indicates that Google apparently is using a poor database and not only has no idea of how Pinyin is meant to be written but also lacks an understanding of even the basic rules of Pinyin.

If you should need to use a free Web-based Pinyin converter, avoid Google Translate. Instead use Adso (from the fine folk at Popup Chinese) or perhaps NCIKU or MDBG — all of which, despite their limitations (c’mon, guys, sentences begin with capital letters), are significantly better than what Google offers.

By the way, Google Translate will also romanize Japanese texts written in kanji and kana, Russian texts written in Cyrillic, etc. But I’ll leave those to others to analyze.

For lagniappe, here’s a real Hanyu Pinyin version of the text above:

Tán Zhōngguó de “yǔ” hé “wén” de wèntí, wǒ juéde zuìhǎo néng xiān liǎojiě yīxià zài Zhōngguó tōngyòng de yǔyán. Zhōngguó de zhǔyào yǔyán yǒu nǎxiē? Wèishénme wǒ shuō zhège, ér bù shuō nàge? Yīnwei huánjìng? Yīnwei bèi qiǎngpò? Yīnwei wǒ ài zhège yǔyán? Yīnwei yǒu bìyào? Yīnwei zhè ge yǔyán hěn zhòngyào? Yě xiǎngxiang shénme shì Zhōngguórén de gòngtóng yǔyán? Yòng yīge gòngtóng yǔyán yǒu bìyào ma? Weishenme? Biéde Hànyǔ de qùxiàng huì zěnmeyàng? Rúguǒ nǐ shǐyòng Zhōngguó de gòng tóng yǔyán Pǔtónghuà, nǐ liǎojiě zhège yǔyán de yǔfǎ (bǐrú “de” hé “le” de bùtóng yǒngfǎ) ma? Zhīdao zhège yǔyán de jīběn yīnjié (bù bàokuò shēngdiào) zhǐ yǒu 408 ge ma?

Google Maps switches to Hanyu Pinyin for Taiwan (sloppily)

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Until very recently, Google Maps gave street names in Taiwan in Tongyong Pinyin — most of the time, at least. This was the case even for Taipei, which most definitely has long used Hanyu Pinyin, not Tongyong Pinyin. The romanization on Google Maps was really a hodgepodge in the maps of Taiwan. And it’s still kind of a mess; but now it’s at least more consistent — and more consistent in Hanyu Pinyin.

First the good. In Google Maps:

  • Hanyu Pinyin, not Tongyong Pinyin, is now used for street names throughout Taiwan
  • Tone marks are indicated. (Previous maps with Tongyong did not indicate tones.)

Now the bad, and unfortunately there’s a lot of it and it’s very bad indeed:

  • The Hanyu Pinyin is given as Bro Ken Syl La Bles. (Terrible! Also, this is a new style for Google Maps. Street names in Tongyong were styled properly: e.g., Minsheng, not Min Sheng.)
  • The names of MRT stations remain incorrectly presented. For example, what is referred to in all MRT stations and on all MRT maps as “NTU Hospital” is instead referred to in broken Pinyin as “Tái Dà Yī Yuàn” (in proper Pinyin this would be Tái-Dà Yīyuàn); and “Xindian City Hall” (or “Office” — bleah) is marked as Xīn Diàn Shì Gōng Suǒ (in proper Pinyin: “Xīndiàn Shìgōngsuǒ” or perhaps “Xīndiàn Shì Gōngsuǒ“). Most but not all MRT stations were already this incorrect way (in Hanyu Pinyin rather than Tongyong) in Google Maps.
  • Errors in romanization point to sloppy conversions. For example, an MRT station in Banqiao is labeled Xīn Bù rather than as Xīnpǔ. (埔 is one of those many Chinese characters with multiple Mandarin pronunciations.)
  • Tongyong Pinyin is still used in the names of most cities and townships (e.g., Banciao, not Banqiao).

Screenshot from earlier this evening, showing that Tongyong Pinyin is still being used in Google Maps for some city and district names (e.g., Gueishan, Sinjhuang, Banciao, Jhonghe, Sindian, and Jhongjheng rather than Hanyu Pinyin’s Guishan, Xinzhuang, Banqiao, Zhonghe, Xindian, and Zhongzheng, respectively).
map of Taipei area, with names as shown above

I don’t have any old screenshots of my own available at the moment, so for now I’ll refer you to an image that Fili used in an old post of his. Compare that with this screenshot I took a few minutes ago from Google Maps of the same section of Tainan:
tainan_google_maps2

Note especially how the name of the junior high school is presented.

  • Previously “Jian Xing Junior High School”.
  • Now “Jiàn Xìng Jr High School”.

This is typical of how in old maps some things were labeled (poorly) in Hanyu Pinyin. (Words, not bro ken syl la bles, are the basis for Pinyin orthography. This is a big deal, not a minor error.) And now such places are still labeled poorly in Hanyu Pinyin, but with the addition of tone marks.

I’d like to return to the point earlier on sloppy conversions. Surprisingly, 成都路 is given as “Chéng Doū Road” rather than as “Chéngdū Road“.
screenshot from Google Maps of 'Cheng Dou [sic] Rd', near Taipei's Ximending
Although “Xinpu” might not be the sort of name to be contained in some romanization databases, there is nothing in the least obscure about Chengdu, the name of a city of some 11 million people. Google Translate certainly knows the right thing to do with 成都路:
screenshot from Google Translate, showing how Google will translate '成都路' as 'Chengdu Rd'

But Google Maps doesn’t get this simple point right, which likely points to outsourcing. Why would Google do this? And why wouldn’t it ensure that a better job was done? Because, really, so far the long-overdue conversion to Hanyu Pinyin in Google Maps for Taiwan is something of a botch.