A Map in Gàidhlig

[ArgentArise]

Hello friends!

I am brand new to this forum, and am not sure if I'm in the right place. But I have a question about maps, and the internet led me here. I would like a map in Scottish Gaelic. The Government of Scotland made an Atlas several years ago, but it's out of print and mostly confined to schools. Is there any place you know of where I can find a digital map and change the data for the place names? Or is this more likely to be a situation where I have to learn to draw real good and get out a big piece of paper?

Any help would be appreciated

Tapadh leibh gu mór,

Frìseal

[Redrobes]

Welcome to the guild.

One of the advantages of mapping an area which is real is that you have plenty of resources. For one you can download Open Street Map data for free. Also you can get digital elevation maps of places like the whole of Scotland so that you can shade up a map from it and it will give you the shapes and possibly the colours of the map as seen from space.

So I guess the first stage is to determine what your map of Scotland will look like. Is it black and white like a pen drawn map or a shaded one ? Are there any changes to the map from the real world - i.e. are there any elements of fantasy to it or is it a map of Scotland where the plan is to instruct people about what the names of the places are in Gaelic ? In which case this would be useful to you:

https://openmaptiles.org/languages/g.../56.835/-4.195

So tell us about the map your interesting in creating beyond the name language and we can see if we can find some extra resources for you to make a start.

Found this one too which seems very nicely done if your just after obtaining one:
https://www.weegingerdug.scot/2018/0...p-of-scotland/

[ArgentArise]

Thanks for the welcome!

I apologize, I typed up a reply yesterday but it seems my phone sent it into the abyss!

I'm very interested in Open Street Maps, but I haven't learned to use it yet. There's a lot of 'How-To's online and I haven't gotten around to reading them. I absolutely adore hand drawn maps, but my primary focus is it being educational so I do need to focus on practicality and readability over ornamentation and style. I'm fond of National Geographic's maps (although with less detail because that would be a lot of translating) and I generally think of their 'Classic' style as what a basic map "should" look like. I'm involved in the cultural revival community in Cape Breton, so my main focus is creating a map with country names, capitals, other major cities, names of oceans, etc. in order to facilitate an immersion environment for the language. I wanted it mostly for myself to put up on the wall, but since I'm fortunate enough to live in a place where the language is being taught, if everything goes really well, I'd also offer it to the local schools and institutions.

Thank you for think links you already sent my way!

[Redrobes]

Cool - well OpenStreetMap is super easy to use but by default you get the names in local languages not any one specific language. The pan zoom map uses tiles which has the map image on it and all of the text rendered onto it. So to change language you have to change the tile server to a different server or different tile set - which not many people do. So a few companies have produced tile sets done in different languages and the most popular are the ones in English, French, German, Spanish and a few more. But that link above does suggest that someone out there has done one for Scottish Gaelic so its a case of getting their tiles. Not sure if you have to sign up to their site to get it. But if that does work then you have all of the world all done for you.

Its likely that a specific small area of the world is not very well covered and if you find that for your own area of Cape Breton then you could make a map up for that and populate the names for it which is a whole lot easier than doing the whole world. If you did that then its best to use some kind of paint package like Photoshop or similar and keep the names of places on a separate layer so you can edit/add more names to it.

That being the case your task falls into two parts. One, get the base map and two, put all the names in. I think the guild can help with 1 but 2 is going to be a job only you and a few others can do.