Translating “Open Mapping Towards SDGs”: A YouthMappers Student Project from Furuhashi Lab, Japan

Room: Talks II

Saturday, 12:00
Duration: 20 minutes (plus Q&A)

This event will not be recorded.

• Aki Sato

This talk introduces a student-led initiative from the Furuhashi Lab at Aoyama Gakuin University in Japan, focusing on the localization of global open mapping knowledge. As a YouthMappers chapter, we are currently translating the open-access book Open Mapping towards Sustainable Development Goals into Japanese. The aim of this translation project is to make critical mapping knowledge accessible to non-English-speaking students and to encourage greater participation in the open mapping community.

Recognizing the importance of engaging peers through action, we organized our first online Mapathon in early 2025. This event helped beginner mappers gain hands-on experience and fostered a sense of community among participants. Building on its success, we are now planning a collaborative inter-university Mapathon scheduled for July 2025, with the goal of expanding our network and impact across academic institutions in Japan.

In this talk, we will share insights from managing the translation workflow, including how we divided chapters, ensured consistency in technical vocabulary, and utilized collaborative tools such as GitHub for version control. We will also reflect on our outreach efforts—how we communicated the value of open mapping to our peers and engaged them in both the translation and mapping processes.

Through this project, we aim to empower students with the knowledge and tools needed to contribute to global development goals through geospatial technologies. Ultimately, our initiative highlights the potential of youth-driven efforts to strengthen open mapping education and build inclusive communities, even in regions where English is not the primary language.

Since October 2023, YouthMappers AGU—based at the Furuhashi Laboratory of Aoyama Gakuin University in Japan—has been leading a student-driven translation project of the open-access book “Open Mapping towards Sustainable Development Goals.” This book, published by Springer, collects diverse case studies from YouthMappers chapters across the globe, demonstrating how young people address social and environmental challenges through open mapping.

In Japan, awareness of YouthMappers, OpenStreetMap (OSM), and humanitarian mapping remains relatively low, particularly among students. To bridge this gap, our seminar group proposed translating the book into Japanese—not only to make the content accessible to non-English speakers, but also to inspire local mapping activities based on global examples. This translation effort also serves as an opportunity to cultivate academic and digital literacy skills within the seminar.

The project started during our Fall 2023 semester. We divided the 370-page book among 12 seminar members, assigning roughly 20 pages each. To ensure quality, we created shared translation rules covering tone (formal), terminology consistency (e.g., “map” rendered consistently), format alignment with the original layout, and reference handling. All translations are stored collaboratively on Google Drive and GitHub. As of April 2025, 140 pages have been completed. Our goal is to finalize the full Japanese version by September 2025.

In parallel, our team also initiated hands-on engagement through a student-led online Mapathon held in January 2025. The event involved preparation of posters (via Canva), registration forms, and slide decks. Participants, mostly undergraduates, were introduced to creating OSM accounts, navigating the Tasking Manager, and mapping buildings in Yoronjima, Japan. Post-event surveys showed that while time was limited, many valued the experience of learning the basics of humanitarian mapping.

Key reflections from this event include the importance of communication setup: for instance, participants using smartphones for Zoom and laptops for mapping caused screen-sharing issues, hindering real-time support. Some were unfamiliar with Zoom’s screen-sharing function. These experiences highlighted the need for clearer technical preparation, which we plan to implement in future events.

Looking ahead, we are planning a collaborative Mapathon with another university in July 2025, aiming to expand inter-university cooperation in humanitarian mapping and involve more Japanese students in the global YouthMappers movement.

This presentation will showcase our dual-track initiative: (1) localizing global YouthMappers knowledge through structured translation work, and (2) fostering peer learning and community engagement through Mapathon events. As students in the Furuhashi Lab, we will also reflect on how being part of an OSM-active academic lab has supported our growth. We hope our efforts inspire other YouthMappers chapters—especially in non-English-speaking contexts—to pursue similar educational and participatory projects.