Switching the MKMapView display language

Question

Is it possible to switch the underlying language of MKMapView to a different one than the system locale?

For example, if the address displays translated street names (English) but I need to see the native language translations (e.g. in mainland China or Japan).

A alternative to this is to include a local Map Engine (like Baidu) but I wish to see if iOS can do that out of the box.

Answer 1

The map will display in the language of the country it is displaying, often with English (or maybe your local language) as a second language. Open the Maps app on your phone and type in Dubai or Cairo, Egypt, for example, and you'll see Arabic text for cities and streets.

The same is true of other languages. Type Shanghai, China and you'll get Chinese text, Tokyo, Japan and you'll get Japanese text, etc.

There is (as of now) no open framework functions to manually change the languages of the input. I know that the openstreetmap API have some calls for this, but that would require rolling your own map handler.