The World in French? There’s a basemap for that.
“It’s great to see Esri provide good quality, French specific mapping content made freely available! It’s so important to create multilingual content of all scales to encourage and foster the use and preservation of our French language.”
This post was translated to French and can be viewed here.
When Francophone members of the Community Map of Canada Advisory Council discussed the importance of having a French-language World Topographic basemap to benefit the French-speaking GIS community, the Community Map of Canada team embarked on a great collaborative project.
The idea was to bring together the authoritative Community Map of Canada data that represent Canada and global French-labelled place names, merging them into one cohesive basemap. This meant cross-Atlantic communication with Esri France, as they provide Esri Inc. with all these French labels.
An extent of the Carte communautaire du Canada : le monde en français web map showing French-language place names and features.
“It’s great to see Esri provide good quality, French specific mapping content made freely available! It’s so important to create multilingual content of all scales to encourage and foster the use and preservation of our French language,” says Rachelle Doucet, Team Lead for Geoinformatics at the City of Moncton and Co-Chair of the Community Map of Canada Advisory Council.
Previously, Francophone GIS users could create and use their own version of the World Topographic basemap by changing the place name language in the ArcGIS Vector Tile Style Editor. However, that workaround basemap had to be self-hosted, rather than being hosted in the basemap gallery or the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World, and it didn’t include any data from the Community Map of Canada.
“This map removes the burden of creating and maintaining a separate basemap to support bilingual requirements for content made available to the public. In NB [New Brunswick], as an officially bilingual province, this is especially useful!” continued Rachelle.
You can now find the Carte communautaire du Canada : le monde en français in the Living Atlas. The web map can be incorporated into projects, maps and apps, and vous êtes invités to explore the map to discover all the French language placenames. I’m always happy to answer any questions, suggestions, or if you just want to chat about basemaps.
My fellow Community Maps Technical Solutions Specialist (TSS) Amanda Hunter is hosting a webinar on November 2 on using imagery in ArcGIS products, titled “Imagery in ArcGIS: Exploring Products and Possibilities”. The webinar will better orient you to the possibilities associated with using imagery in the ArcGIS system and show you how to begin using these products through multiple workflow demonstrations. Register here for the webinar.