Brian, I appreciate the effort and time you're investing here but it would be immensely appreciated if you could be (much!) more concise in your arguments. Your edits are, frankly, exhausting to check. 

Explanatory glosses should be explanatory glosses, not explanations, but I'm having a hard time seeing the need for either - I don't quite get what it is that's so puzzling to you about the literal Japanese because it seems very clear to me. I also don't see the issue with "a one-eyed man in the land of the blind", it seems obvious what proverb its a reference to. 

I'm OK with this being glossed as a proverb for now.

@@ -29,2 +29 @@
-<gloss g_type="lit">a bat in a village without birds ( that is treated as a bird for lack of other options )</gloss>
-<gloss g_type="expl">analogy for someone who flaunts a mediocre talent, or (someone, something) that is able to prosper only for lack of competition</gloss>
+<gloss g_type="lit">a bat in a village without birds</gloss>

I had prepared the following, then forgot to press submit. I now see Brian has made another proposal.
------
GG5 tags it as 【諺】 and most expressions tagged that way we have tagged as [proverb]. Probably many should be tagged as idioms, e.g. "浅瀬に仇波 （あさせにあだなみ） (exp) (proverb) deep rivers move in silence".
I'll raise an issue on the proverb/idiom tagging.
Should this one be glossed differently? I don't think so.

Use as a noun, without みたい
https://twitter.com/search?q="鳥なき里の蝙蝠だ"&src=typed_query&f=live
俺に言わせれば、大江健三郎なんてのは鳥なき里の蝙蝠だ。
https://twitter.com/kuraha/status/1615656795388923907
鳥なき里の蝙蝠だね長曽我部さん

An idiom two-fer:
https://twitter.com/WgnZ5Qvx3BUYHwY/status/1543829804965036033
④安倍晋三、麻生太郎はど同じ穴の貉だなだ「鳥なき里の蝙蝠」だからだ！⑤に続く

(one of Marcus's examples was also ~だ)

... the [expl] is not tightly worded, you all would probably have better wording than I could produce.  

Agree that this is [n], either directly as 彼は...蝙蝠だ, or as 蝙蝠みたいだ。 There is a good reason that this was originally glossed as the unnatural "a one-eyed king in the land of the blind".

You work in an office of 20 people.  People are generally intelligent, people generally do their jobs well.  People are *not* generally tech savvy though, but one guy in the office "knows computers", and is constantly bragging about his ability to fix/manage/maintain them(even though his skills are rather mediocre).  He's the only "tech guy" in the office, so people put up with it.  He's the bat in a village without birds.

The office workers don't make him king.  They begrudgingly tolerate him in the limited area where they have no choice. (This is reflected in the fact that calling someone a 鳥なき里の蝙蝠 is fundamentally an insult).

Is that in this gloss somewhere?  Is that an "In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king"?

Or, here's a simple one:
https://twitter.com/ba17_Eri/status/1082149051762536448
鳥なき里の蝙蝠みたいな人は嫌いだよ
I hate one-eyed bats in villages without birds.  = I hate one-eyed kings in lands of the blind?

I'm certainly not going to die on the hill of removing the "one-eyed-man" gloss, because I don't think I'll convince you.  It's not as though it's never an appropriate gloss.  It's just that the base nuance is significantly different, and so it is significantly inadequate in communicating what this idiom means, both in the J->E and E->J direction.

Just take Marcus's last example.  A Japanese person as at a job interview says:
"I will try to not become a bat in a village without birds".  

Ok... I, an English speaker, read this on twitter and think "ok, let me look that up....".  Here, it says this means "I will try not to become a one-eyed king in a country of the blind".

What is that supposed to mean, and *why* would a Japanese person even consider saying such a thing in a job interview? 

On top of that, I can say concretely(personal experience) that it is completely unclear what the literal expression is supposed to mean(like I offered earlier, is it about eating lots of bugs?).  But there *is* a meaning, which something like the one I added in parenthesis (or, as imidas explains 鳥として扱われ ~ is treated by the villagers as if he is a bird for lack of other options). And the bat is understood to be completely full of himself for thinking he is such an excellent bird (or so good at flying).   It *doesn't* (inherently) mean the villagers don't know that birds exist.  There just aren't any around.  It is not an inherent slight on the villagers. (thought it seems it could maybe be used as such) If it were a slight against the village, it couldn't be used in an interview, and wouldn't have been used in my Keio University graduation-speech example.

Adding a parenthetical clarification explains the gloss in the J->E direction, and explains the metaphor more completely in the E->J direction to anyone looking it up.  

To Marcus's three example sentences:
「こんな会社で出世しても、鳥なき里の蝙蝠みたいで、なんだかむなしいな」
Even if you get ahead in this company, you'll just look to colleagues like you're exploiting the lack of competition (and thus they will have no respect for you, they'll consider you a 鳥なき里の蝙蝠),  so what's the point.

Or perhaps: you're only getting ahead because there are no talented people in the company, so what's the point.  I'd rather succeed in an environment with intelligent people and competition. (one-eyed man kind-of works if this is the intention)

kotowaza-dictionary
彼は自分の部署では王様のように振舞っているそうだ。まるで鳥なき里の蝙蝠だよ。
Perfect example of what I mean.  The sentence says "彼はまるで蝙蝠だよ". He's arrogant, he thinks he knows everything.  But, in fact, he's an idiot with no one smarter around to challenge him.  It's not a slight against the employees at all ("the land of the blind").   振舞っているそうだ ~ "I've heard from the people who work with/under him that...".

Let's try the English gloss... "He acts like a king in his department, but he's actually a complete one-eyed man in a land of the blind".  ???  Sounds like you're insulting the employees to me.

random tweets
人事面談で「鳥なき里の蝙蝠にならないように気をつけます」って言ったら（何言ってんだこいつ・・・？）みたいな空気になってしまいしょんぼりした。
Who would ever say "I will become careful to not become a king in the land of the blind". Or "I will be careful to not become a one-eyed king".  

It was an interview, and he was literally trying to say:

   "I understand the importance of humility. "

Look at the replies to the thread:
https://twitter.com/RakT1a869LnEHne/status/1432708246247256072
Re: 戦国時代のちょいマイナーネタは思ったより通じないですよね. 
A rather minor story from the warring states period didn't get across as well as you expected, eh.
Re:Re 人事なら知ってるかなと思ったんですがダメでしたね
The were HR (Human Resources), so I thought they'd know (the reference), but I guess not.

Finally:
僕らは所詮は井の中の蛙であり鳥なき里の蝙蝠。
Twitter died before I could find the source, but it seems rather philosophical and self-deprecating ("we are merely...") to me. Searching for 井の中の蛙 and 鳥なき里の蝙蝠 I got following gloss on a Chinese phrase with associated commentary:
https://gogakuru.com/chinese/phrase/19698
“夜郎自大”は身の程をわきまえずに偉そうに振る舞うことのたとえで、日本語では「井の中の蛙」や「鳥なき里のこうもり」に近い意味です。相手を批判・非難する際などによく使われる辛辣な言葉なので、使うときには注意が必要です。
Google:"Yarojidai" is a parable of acting arrogant without knowing one's position, and in Japanese it means something similar to "a frog in a well" or "a bat in a village without birds." It is a harsh word that is often used when criticizing the other person, so you need to be careful when using it.

Here's a case where I thought "one-eyed man" almost worked, but on reflection, there's still a problem
https://twitter.com/MilitantL/status/1603199098517348352
安倍というのは鳥なき里の蝙蝠みたいなものだったが、蝙蝠もいなくなっての見苦しいドタバタ。
Abe was a bat... but now that's he's gone... (was a one eyed king, but now that he's gone...)

Saying Abe "may have been a bat an a village without birds" is saying, "he was an idiot, true, but without even a bat, party's gone to pieces".

If you say that the everyone-is-blind political-party lost their one-eyed king, well, going to pieces is the *expected* outcome.  At least they had someone who could see, of course they would be worse without him.

Well, that's why a removed the one-eyed man gloss.  It's an "obvious" match, but it's very shallow in its application.  Any attempt to substitute one idiom for the other in J->E or E->J is as likely as not to lead to some form of misunderstanding.

Two final thoughts:
1. The English expression seems far more readily understood than the Japanese one (hence the Japanese interview flub). There are pitfalls in aligning widely-known idioms with less-known idioms.
2. As has already been acknowledged, structurally these don't match up at all.  It would be difficult to exchange one for the other without considerable grammatical manipulation.

@@ -25,0 +26 @@
+<pos>&n;</pos>
@@ -27,2 +28,3 @@
-<gloss>in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king</gloss>
-<gloss g_type="lit">a bat in a village without birds</gloss>
+<gloss>in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king</gloss>
+<gloss g_type="lit">a bat in a village without birds ( that is treated as a bird for lack of other options )</gloss>
+<gloss g_type="expl">analogy for someone who flaunts a mediocre talent, or (someone, something) that is able to prosper only for lack of competition</gloss>

imidas example
「こんな会社で出世しても、鳥なき里の蝙蝠（こうもり）みたいで、なんだかむなしいな」
kotowaza-dictionary
彼は自分の部署では王様のように振舞っているそうだ。まるで鳥なき里の蝙蝠だよ。
rabdom tweets
人事面談で「鳥なき里の蝙蝠にならないように気をつけます」って言ったら（何言ってんだこいつ・・・？）みたいな空気になってしまいしょんぼりした。

僕らは所詮は井の中の蛙であり鳥なき里の蝙蝠。

These expressions are always tricky to handle - they are noun phrases but sometimes used in a proverbial way. But I think this should be glossed as an idion and a noun, as it was before Brian's edit.