SOME ASPECTS OF MULTILINGUAL PLANETARY MAP PRODUCING FOR NON- 
PROFESSIONAL AUDIENCE: VISUALIZATION AND NOMENCLATURE. 
H. I. Hargitai' 
'Eötvös Loränd University, Budapest 1117 Päzmäny P. st. 1/a, hargitai@emc.elte.hu 
WG IV/9 Extraterrestrial mapping TS-PS 
KEYWORDS: Cartography, Extra-terrestrial, Visualization, Generalization, Identification, Teaching, Database 
ABSTRACT: In general, maps should answer a very simple question of its reader: "what's there" and „where is something”? For 
planetary maps, the answer is more difficult, because (1) in some cases even map makers don't know what's there, since the main 
original source data is images of the surface (2) its readers are not familiar with the surface forms (3) the official Latin IAU names 
appearing on the map provide little guidance. Most planetary maps made for the general public are photo- or pixel based, not 
vectorial cartographic products. This would require different working methods but, would provide more understandable (and, 
necessarily, [pre-] interpreted) maps. 
[n the paper give details/answers of above mentioned problems, mainly from the experience of the editing of the map of Mars, Venus 
and the Moon in the Central European Edition of the Multilingual Planetary Maps series initiated by MIIGAiK (Moscow) and 
supported by the ICA Commission on Planetary Cartography and by the Hungarian Space Office; and of the planetary maps of the 
World Atlas published by Topograf Ltd, Hungary. 
We have conducted a detailed survey of the maps of the Moon and Mars using the same bas maps but different nomenclatures: one 
with translated generic forms and an other with the Latin forms and we examined how the interpretation and understandability has 
changed using the two different maps. We also surveyed what the map readers missed from the maps and what elements they could 
not interpret. The goal of our research is to find elements with which we can make planetary maps with a richer information content 
that can be easily decoded by the users. 
INTRODUCTION 
A considerable part of all published Planetary maps are 
produced for non-professional audience. The | map- 
understanding and map-interpretation of the general public is 
usually not very good even for tourist maps, and this is also the 
case for planetary maps, where they find even less information 
that can be easy to decode (understand): even thought the 
information are there, for the map readers they are 
undecipherable. 
We have produced several wall-, world atlas- and online 
planetary maps for non professional audience. Using these maps 
we have initiated a survey among amateur astronomers, 
university and high school students, asking them about what 
they understood form the different test maps. Part of the result 
are presented in this paper, which tells that planetary maps need 
a special attention in both nomenclature and its visual 
representations in order to make it more easily and effectively 
interpreted or decoded by the those who are not familiar with 
terrestrial planetary surface features. 
Prerequisites for creating a new generation of planetary 
maps for general (non scientific) use. 
(1) There is a need for a clear guide or database of the landform 
types of the Solar System. This is a prerequisite for all maps, 
since for the generalization and symbols used in the map, we 
must previously know what groups and types of features will 
appear on the map. Such database should contain landforms 
listed by their geology, morphology and TAU names. There is 
also need for a catalogue of the historic (or diachronic) 
terminology in planetary science: during the decades the terms 
applied for certain features changed, or the same name is used 
differently. 
(2) The readers find a completely alien world on the map. Many 
of the surface forms has no Earth parallels, thus we can't have 
experience to imagine them. The used symbols and the 
generalization should help readers properly identify the features. 
Since such landforms don't appear on Earth maps, we have to 
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find new symbols for them. A map readable for the „general 
user” should contain geologic, stratigraphic, albedo, 
morphologic and topographic and historic (landings) 
information to make the map better interpretable and 
understandable. Most maps are very small scale maps. This can 
only show a limited variety of features, however, the most 
interesting" features are of relatively small size. Here carefully 
selected cutouts and/or generalization can help to highlight the 
location of these landforms (in the case of Mars: landslides, 
layered crater deposits, DDS's, small valleys, calderas etc). 
(3) Names of extraterrestrial features have almost the same 
historic complexity as terrestrial ones. ,,Planetary nomenclature, 
like terrestrial nomenclature, is used to uniquely identify a 
feature on the surface of a planet or satellite so that the feature 
can be easily located, described, and discussed." (Gazetteer... 
1, 2003) While this goal is achieved in scientific discussions, 
for public education or popular science the present day 
international form of planetary names is not suitable. The IAU 
nomenclature is in Latin language which is not understandable 
for large part of the map readers. Most editors and popular 
writers do use a national language variant of these names (in 
books, articles, Atlases). Since there is no standardized national 
transformation rule for guiding this effort, they try their best, 
and this way produce multiple translated transcribed 
/transliterated variants for the same feature name. (N.B. The 
translation may seem unnecessary for the reader who 
understand a Indo-European language, since even though the 
names are not the same words as the ones in their language 
they are familiar and relatively easy to find out their meaning 
[Mons - Mount or Planitia - Plains]. This is not the case for 
several other European and most of not European languages 
where the Latin names are meaningless.) 
In the case of maps for non-professional or young audience, I 
propose - to some extent in contrast to the UNGEN (United 
Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names) efforts on à 
single standardization of geographical names - 10 use 
standardized national language variants of the Latin 
terminology, with which it would be much easier (or, this 
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