Non-​​Roman Venue Names in Foursquare

Foursquare clearly wasn’t de­signed to be used world­wide, but it is be­ing used world­wide. This cre­ates a lan­guage con­sis­tency prob­lem when adding venues. Places like China, Japan, and Korea use non-​​Roman char­ac­ters which are for the most part un­in­tel­li­gi­ble to for­eign­ers (tourists and ex­pats), so of­ten­times you’ll see sep­a­rate en­tries for the same venue – one in English, and one in the lo­cal language.

For venues in these coun­tries, I rec­om­mend that the nam­ing for­mat be the pri­mary name, fol­lowed by the sec­ondary name in paren­the­sis. The pri­mary name is de­fined as the name used by the lo­cals for the venue, and the sec­ondary name is in the lan­guage that the venue uses in­ter­na­tion­ally (usu­ally English). Examples and clar­i­fi­ca­tions be­low, us­ing venues in China:

东方明珠塔 (Oriental Pearl Tower)
This venue is known to lo­cals as “东方明珠塔” and to for­eign­ers as “Oriental Pearl Tower”.

外滩 (The Bund)
Locals call it “外滩”, for­eign­ers call it “The Bund”.

中国移动 (China Mobile)
Chinese com­pany, known to lo­cals as “中国移动”, known to every­one else as “China Mobile”.

Meters/​Bonwe
This is a Chinese com­pany called “美特斯邦威”, but it brands and pro­motes it­self as “Meters/​Bonwe”, and is known to lo­cals as “Meters/​Bonwe”. The Chinese name is not needed in this case.

KFC
Although KFC in China is known as “肯德基”, all of its lo­cal­ized brand­ing still con­tain the let­ters “KFC”, so lo­cals all rec­og­nize “KFC” as “肯德基”. In this case the Chinese name is not needed as it would be redundant.

麦当劳 (McDonald’s) [???]
Here’s one I’m not sure about. This is an American com­pany but is known in China as “麦当劳”. I’m not sure if most lo­cals would rec­og­nize the name “McDonald’s” with­out its Chinese name “麦当劳”, since its sig­nage and pack­ag­ing here usu­ally just uses “麦当劳” (un­like KFC/​肯德基 and Starbucks/星巴克).

So ba­si­cally, the for­mat is what­ever the venue is known as to the lo­cals, fol­lowed in paren­the­sis by what­ever it’s known as internationally.

As for street names, I be­lieve they should just use the lo­cal lan­guage, since they some­times get trans­lated in mul­ti­ple ways (at least in China).

Any sug­ges­tions?