Popular navigation apps unlikely to ditch Mercator maps despite UN resolution
Popular navigation apps unlikely to ditch Mercator maps despite UN resolution
尽管联合国通过决议，热门导航应用仍不太可能放弃墨卡托投影地图
Nearly every country represented in the United Nations General Assembly recently voted in favor of promoting world maps that more accurately show the size of various continents. But the UN resolution is unlikely to change how millions of people regularly see versions of 16th-century Mercator maps depicting skewed continent sizes in navigation apps.
最近，联合国大会的几乎所有成员国都投票支持推广能更准确显示各大洲面积的世界地图。然而，这项联合国决议不太可能改变数以百万计的用户在导航应用中查看 16 世纪墨卡托投影地图（该地图显示的大洲面积存在偏差）的习惯。
On September 4, the African-led resolution attracted 164 votes in favor, with six countries abstaining from voting. Only the United States voted to oppose the resolution after describing it as a “radical ideological project,” according to UN News.
据联合国新闻报道，9 月 4 日，这项由非洲国家牵头的决议获得了 164 票赞成，6 个国家弃权。只有美国投票反对，称其为“激进的意识形态项目”。
The non-binding UN resolution does not impose map changes on anyone. Instead, it “encourages governments, schools, international organizations, and technology companies to use the Equal Earth projection and other so-called equal-area maps when relative size matters,” UN News reported. The resolution also encourages teaching about the trade-offs that arise from depicting a spherical planet on a flat map.
这项不具约束力的联合国决议并未强制任何人更改地图。据联合国新闻报道，它只是“鼓励各国政府、学校、国际组织和科技公司在需要考虑相对大小时，使用‘等积地球投影’（Equal Earth projection）及其他所谓的等积地图”。该决议还鼓励人们了解将球体行星绘制在平面地图上所带来的权衡问题。
Many popular world maps often represent modernized versions of the Mercator world map originally developed by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569. His focus was on creating a map projection that showed straight lines consistent with how ships might move when consistently following a compass bearing, making it a very practical maritime navigation tool for plotting accurate courses at sea.
许多流行的世界地图通常是 1569 年由佛兰芒制图师杰拉杜斯·墨卡托（Gerardus Mercator）开发的墨卡托世界地图的现代化版本。他的初衷是创建一种地图投影，使直线与船舶保持罗盘方位航行时的路径一致，这使其成为海上规划精确航线的实用航海工具。
The practicality of the Mercator projection for navigation helped it become one of the most popular world maps still in use today, and digital maps are no exception. The most widely used navigation apps, such as Google Maps and Apple Maps, still use variations of the Mercator projection, with Google Maps alone having more than 2 billion monthly users.
墨卡托投影在导航方面的实用性使其成为当今使用最广泛的世界地图之一，数字地图也不例外。谷歌地图（Google Maps）和苹果地图（Apple Maps）等最常用的导航应用仍在使用墨卡托投影的变体，仅谷歌地图的月活跃用户就超过了 20 亿。
However, the Mercator map comes with the trade-off of showing inaccurate sizes for continents. Landmasses become artificially enlarged the farther they are from the Earth’s equator, which leads to absurdities such as the continent of Africa appearing to be the same size as Greenland despite being 14 times bigger.
然而，墨卡托地图的代价是无法准确显示大洲的面积。陆地距离地球赤道越远，其面积就会被人为放大，这导致了一些荒谬的现象，例如非洲大陆看起来竟然和格陵兰岛一样大，而实际上非洲的面积是格陵兰岛的 14 倍。
The visually inflated size of certain landmasses such as Greenland on the Mercator map may even have geopolitical implications. A study published in Communication Reports found that national security arguments paired with the Mercator map could influence how people evaluated the Trump administration’s proposal to purchase Greenland.
墨卡托地图上格陵兰岛等陆地面积在视觉上的夸大，甚至可能产生地缘政治影响。发表在《传播报告》（Communication Reports）上的一项研究发现，国家安全论点与墨卡托地图相结合，可能会影响人们对特朗普政府购买格陵兰岛提议的评估。
Map bias and trade-offs
地图偏差与权衡
By comparison, the Equal Earth map projection was developed in 2018 to accurately represent the size of landmasses at the expense of distorting their shapes. Bojan Šavrič, Bernhard Jenny, and Tom Patterson created the Equal Earth map in response to cartographic controversy over the Boston Public Schools’ 2017 decision to use a Galls-Peters projection for world maps. The latter provides more proportional landmasses but greatly distorts shapes near the polar regions.
相比之下，“等积地球投影”于 2018 年开发，旨在准确呈现陆地面积，但代价是扭曲了它们的形状。Bojan Šavrič、Bernhard Jenny 和 Tom Patterson 创建“等积地球”地图，是为了回应波士顿公立学校 2017 年决定在世界地图中使用“高尔-彼得斯投影”（Galls-Peters projection）所引发的制图争议。后者虽然提供了更符合比例的陆地面积，但极大地扭曲了极地附近的形状。
There is value in clarifying public perceptions about how each map distorts reality. A study of 130,000 people found that people more familiar with the Robinson map projection—a compromise between equal-area representation and accurate preservation of small-area shapes and angles—estimated the size of countries, regions, and continents more accurately on average than people who had greater familiarity with the Mercator map projection.
厘清公众对不同地图如何扭曲现实的认知是有价值的。一项针对 13 万人的研究发现，比起更熟悉墨卡托投影的人，那些更熟悉“罗宾逊投影”（Robinson projection，一种在等积表示与准确保留小区域形状和角度之间取得折衷的投影）的人，在估算国家、地区和大洲面积时，平均准确度更高。
“This result emphasizes the need to use less area-distorted map projections in, for example, (social) media and in educational materials,” the researchers wrote in their paper published in the ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information.
研究人员在发表于《ISPRS国际地理信息杂志》的论文中写道：“这一结果强调了在（社交）媒体和教育材料中，需要使用面积扭曲较小的地图投影。”
The most famous illustration of how the Mercator map projection distorts Africa’s true size comes from German software designer Kai Krause. In 2010, he developed a visualization called “The True Size of Africa” showing how the African continent could encompass the United States, China, India, Japan, and practically all of Europe.
关于墨卡托投影如何扭曲非洲真实面积的最著名案例来自德国软件设计师凯·克劳斯（Kai Krause）。2010 年，他开发了一个名为“非洲的真实大小”的可视化图表，展示了非洲大陆可以容纳美国、中国、印度、日本以及几乎整个欧洲。
Inspired by Kai Krause’s infographic, James Talmage and Damon Maneice created “The True Size Of…” website that shows how the Mercator projection distorts the size of different countries as they’re dragged around on the map. They also took inspiration from an episode of The West Wing that featured a discussion of Mercator map bias involving the fictional Organization of Cartographers for Social Equality.
受凯·克劳斯信息图的启发，詹姆斯·塔尔马奇（James Talmage）和达蒙·马尼斯（Damon Maneice）创建了“The True Size Of…”网站，展示了当不同国家在地图上被拖动时，墨卡托投影是如何扭曲其面积的。他们还从美剧《白宫风云》（The West Wing）的一集中获得了灵感，该集讨论了涉及虚构组织“社会平等制图师协会”的墨卡托地图偏差问题。
Some governments and schools may take their cue from the UN resolution to promote more educational use of the Equal Earth map projection. But that won’t change the fact that millions of people will continue regularly consulting navigation apps like Google Maps that feature the Mercator map projection. The latter’s practical usefulness was acknowledged even by the UN resolution’s backers.
一些政府和学校可能会根据联合国决议，促进“等积地球”地图投影在教育中的更多应用。但这无法改变数以百万计的人将继续使用以墨卡托投影为特色的谷歌地图等导航应用的事实。即便是联合国决议的支持者，也承认了后者的实用价值。
Of course, the best way to view the world’s continents and other landmasses with the correct shapes and sizes is to look at a physical 3D representation of the world’s globe—or to interact with Google Earth’s digital depiction of the world that includes satellite imagery and 3D representations of buildings and terrain.
当然，要以正确的形状和大小查看世界各大洲和其他陆地，最好的方法是观察实体的 3D 地球仪，或者使用谷歌地球（Google Earth）的数字世界模型，其中包含了卫星图像以及建筑物和地形的 3D 展示。