Originally Posted by
JPDM
Not sure that it is so simple. street names are easy, just go for the pinyin and not an English translation. I think that we would all agree on this one. But what about the name of businesses? Pinyin would not work for many places. Would translate Chinese to Yijia or IKEA?
Google actually does a pretty good job (in English) with big stores such as IKEA, but a big problem with Google Maps in China is that they simply don't bother identifying smaller venues (at all). Meanwhile, Baidu attempts to show as many mom-and-pop places as possible, many of which simply don't translate well to English. Sure, they could be lazy and use terms like "noodle shop" as a catch all for numerous types of noodle shops, but this would do people who want ramen instead of mifen a disservice IMO.