It seems that there is a mix of English and Hebrew in the “operator” tag for routes in Israel. In some cases, different routes of the same operator are tagged in Hebrew and in English. For example, “Egged” and “אגד”.
Also, for hiking trails, the Wiki recommends using English acronyms, some are for the name in Hebrew:
However, I have not seen any OSM recommendation for using abbreviations in tags in general, or for the operator tag in particular.
What do you think about these practices:
Which language do you think should be used in Israel?
This is an interesting question. The “operator” tag goes on bus route relations, right? So what happens if Egged operates one route inside an Arabic-speaking city, and another route inside an Hebrew-speaking city, would the two routes have the same “operator” tag?
Another situation, suppose a company incorporated in France operated a hotel in Haifa, wouldn’t the operator tag on the hotel have to be the company’s name — which would be in French?
I assume the “operator” field may be displayed to users by some apps, implying that it shouldn’t contain abbreviations. Abbreviations would be fine for non-user-visible parts, e.g., the possible values of “role” in a relation.