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Don't guess my language

vitonsky.net

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Re: Don't guess my language

#91

Post by echoangle »

immibis wrote: post #70
echoangle wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even get the point of that. If I need a translation of the title, I won't be able to watch the video anyways. At least ot makes some sense with the horribly auto-translated videos now, but they had the title translation for a long time while the video was still the original language.

There's been automatic subtitle translation for a long time.

Good point, I didn’t even think about that because I would never watch a video in a foreign language with auto-translated subtitles.

Re: Don't guess my language

#92

Post by jacknews »

What's really annoying is when it sets the script to the local language which could be something like telugu, and then the writing is unreadable if you can only read the latin alphabet.

And then the 'change language' menu is rendered in the unreadable script.

google maps, in fact most google apps.

Re: Don't guess my language

#93

Post by nilslindemann »

tapia wrote: post #23

I also hate the youtube "feature" that translates the titles of videos to your setting's language. This is so annoying. I can understand English and don't need these automatic translations.

It is not just that these translations are not needed, they are often - in my case German - of a low quality, contain errors and lose information which the original language contained. And the roboter voices loses all the interesting modulations of the original voice. Even a Fireship video sounds terrible when translated.

Re: Don't guess my language

#94

Post by nottorp »

sikiladho wrote: post #88

I’m glad someone said this. As someone from Pakistan whose first language is Sindhi and who detests the imposition of Urdu as a ‘lingua franca,’ I find it very frustrating when Google forces Urdu on Gmail, YouTube, and Search. It also flips the entire user interface to a right-to-left layout to match Urdu’s writing direction, which feels completely unfamiliar and disorienting to me.

Ouch. So we europeans have it easy. At least all the languages are left to right.

Re: Don't guess my language

#95

Post by lblume »

LoganDark wrote: post #28
lblume wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That should not be the business of the site, but of the browser. It is precisely what Accept-Language is for. The site should respect the header, allowing circumvention should be a very low accessibility priority.

Which browser, if any, even allows you to modify this header per-website?

One example is qutebrowser:

https://qutebrowser.org/doc/help/settings.html#content.heade...

I assume other developer-centric browsers have similar options.

Re: Don't guess my language

#96

Post by lblume »

sgt wrote: post #33
lblume wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That should not be the business of the site, but of the browser. It is precisely what Accept-Language is for. The site should respect the header, allowing circumvention should be a very low accessibility priority.

The browser just looks at the system language. That may be US English, but you want to read the site in Spanish for example.

It defaults to it, but the preferred language can be changed in all major browsers, though currently not on a per-website basis.

Re: Don't guess my language

#97

Post by edarchis »

doix wrote: post #9

My biggest annoyance is with Google. They know who I am, they know I am traveling, they know my language preferences (English) and yet I still get language based on my location on certain pages. I let you track me Google, please use it for some good UX and not just advertising.

I've had this argument with a Google Developer.

He told me that for efficiency, they had different stages in the content rendering and that the main page structure didn't have your user information yet. That's rubbish IMHO because the accept language header should be readily available in that phase.

Re: Don't guess my language

#98

Post by mynegation »

Here is one big reason some sites do geolocation nevertheless: pricing and legal. Does not matter what language you speak - they still have to look up proper prices in your local currency and offer you country or region-specific deals and legal language. E.g. in Canada Quebec limits what kind of sales or raffles you can offer so websites prepare different site copy. Yes, there are French speaking people outside Quebec and English speaking people in Quebec, but company may not have resources and time to prepare 4 copies instead of 2.

Re: Don't guess my language

#99

Post by nottorp »

q3k wrote: post #10
lmm wrote: post #8

> You don’t override screen resolution or color scheme with your own guess They absolutely do lol. Like it or not, people like you are outnumbered by people who set their Accept-Language header wrong and don't know how to fix it. Those people probably buy more too (or at least buy more that shows up in tracking, since you sound like the kind of person who disables cookies etc. too).

> people like you are outnumbered by people who set their Accept-Language header wrong and don't know how to fix it Is this actually something that you can back up with data, or are you just guessing? I find it hard to imagine that would be the case, considering this header generally gets populated by the user's system locale/language.

But my system language is English. Closest english speaking country is 2000+ km away.

And you know what? I didn't pay so much attention to what English I'm selecting so part of my devices are set to UK english and part to US english. It's all English to me, just don't translate my File menu!

Re: Don't guess my language

#100

Post by avhception »

FinnLobsien wrote: post #80
avhception wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My computer is set to English even though I'm German, and sometimes Youtube will treat me to this really uncanny machine voice with really weird phrases because it auto-translated some German video or advert. Lidl is worth it, ja!

I absolutely hate this. I have the exact same thing. Even if the technology was good, I speak both languages and want to see the original. Why is it so hard to just add something as a setting/feature and offer it to people without forcing it on the user?

I wonder if Lidl or the other advertisers know and approve of this.
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