Places: Add config option to localize location names

[graciousgrey]

As a user, I want to be able to configure the language of location names so that I can understand and search for them.

Documentation:

• https://docs.photoprism.app/getting-started/config-options/#customization

Acceptance Criteria:

• Add PHOTOPRISM_PLACES_LOCALE config option
• Write unit test
• Write acceptance test

[narensankar0529]

Currently search by location is not possible since names are all in language of the location of the picture. So unless one knows all the languages in the world of the location that you are traveling to - it is impossible to locate your picture by search. I have pictures with Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, French, German etc etc. Is it not possible to pull the location from a geo-locator based on the interface language?

[lastzero]

That's technically possible, all we need is time & money to implement this.

[newswangerd]

@lastzero I noticed that the OSM api[1] returns translated place names and the places api[2] does not.

Is there a way to configure photoprism to use the OSM apis instead of the places api? I saw a PHOTOPRISM_GEOCODING_API=<places|osm> configuration mentioned here, but I can't figure out if it was implemented or not and I don't see any reference to this option when I run photoprism config.

[1]

photoprism/internal/maps/osm/location.go

Line 26 in 6811a07

var ReverseLookupURL = "https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/reverse?lat=%f&lon=%f&format=jsonv2&accept-language=en&zoom=18"

[2]

photoprism/internal/hub/places/location.go

Line 31 in 6811a07

var ReverseLookupURL = "https://places.photoprism.app/v1/location/%s"

[lastzero]

Not yet, it's not a technical problem - just too many other tasks at the moment.

[newswangerd]

@lastzero I put together a small PR to enable configuring the Geolocation API: #1129

I experimented with putting the user's configured locale in the OSM reverse lookup URL, but discovered that country names are loaded using a the country code from the API response, which are only available in English right now[1]. That meant that city names were correctly translated, but not country names which always appeared in English, so I left that out. If you think its a good idea to either put the locale in the reverse lookup and live with the fact that country names are just going to be in English or load country names from the OSM response instead of the country dict when OSM is configured I'm happy to do that.

[1] https://github.com/photoprism/photoprism/blob/develop/internal/maps/countries.go#L4

[lastzero]

We don't use the public OSM API as it is not allowed for production apps. Need to implement that in our backend.

[newswangerd]

I'm happy to help implement that if you can point me towards a good starting place.

[SwedenGuy]

I would add that this is a problem as well. I recently visited China and all of the location names are tagged in Chinese - this makes searching rather difficult. It is a real shame, as things like the title are really spot-on. Maybe as a quick hack would just to run it through the google translate API? This could be an offering for the paid tiers?

Eg: Title: 上海自然博物馆 / 静安区 / 2024
Keywords: blue, china, josh, museum, 上海市, 上海自然博物馆, 北京西路, 石门二路街道, 静安区

Translated:
Title: Shanghai Museum of Natural History / Jing’an District / 2024
keywords: blue, china, josh, museum, Shanghai, Shanghai Museum of Natural History, Beijing West Road, Shimen 2nd Road Street, Jing'an District