Correct setup for Google Maps in multi-language site

Question

The project I'm working on is multi-lingual, there is a large member sign-up campaign planned and it is necessary to show statistics, and ideally also a map with marker clusters, to display where the members are coming from. I've tackled the map part without a problem using Google Maps by Objective HTML but I'm running into problems trying to figure out:

1- how to have the locations translated so that, for example, in english you read New York, USA but in portuguese you get Nova Iorque, EUA.

2- what method to use so that I can display a list of all the countries which have members on the site and the number of members per country.

3- it's important to be able to search the members by region/country but I can't get the search form to work properly, do I need dedicated lat/long fields?

I suspect this all comes down to how I setup the Google Maps field type, if I have dedicated fields for lat/long and the formatted address or not. I'll be using Publisher for the translations but I'm still not sure what's the best field setup.

Also, let's say there are hundreds of markers to display on the map, the clusters take care of that visually, but how do you cope with the memory usage?

I will be using EE 2.9, Zoo Visitor for the registrations, Publisher, Low Search and Google Maps amongst others.

Thank you for your help any input is welcome!

Answer 1

If the city/country is the only thing you are translating it might be easier to use a 3rd party service to translate them, such as geonames.org. e.g. http://api.geonames.org/search?name=moscow&country=RU&featureCode=PPLC&maxRows=10&type=rdf&username=demo

The demo name has reached its API limit, here is what the response looks like:

Answer 2

I have come up with a few solutions but I still welcome your input since these may prove to be ineffective once I test them.

1- for the translations I'll use a mixture of solutions depending on the objective of the field, for some I'll use a dedicated field for the formatted address so that the users can correct any debris that Google sends in the address, in others I'll look at the options Brian left here.

2- I came up with a solution using Low Search and its shortcuts, I'll have a shortcut to search for each country name, I can feed the country list straight to the database so no problem there. I considered using categories for each country instead of a Google Maps field but I prefer the member to enter a town on Google Maps which gives me more flexibility for other uses.

3- I've managed to make it work.

Thanks