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Don't guess my language

vitonsky.net

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Re: Don't guess my language

#211

Post by GuB-42 »

I suspect that many people who deal with languages only speak English and never left the US. They have been told that other languages exist and that foreign countries exist, and they have to do something about it, and they did... something.

I remember a company I worked with used to have its internet connection go through German servers, even though it was in France. I remember the presentation page for one of Google's phone was in German with no way to have it in anything else. Using a ".fr" domain, "accept-language", logged into a French Google account, I also tried English too, no luck. I only managed to get some UI elements in something other than German, it felt like a troll. I wonder how the Swiss (a small country with 4 official languages) are doing.

In addition to the idea that the IP address is a pretty bad indicator of the language you speak, some websites have trouble with the idea that people can understand more than one language.

Hey, YouTube, I know I have set my account to French, but I understand English and you know it, so please don't auto-translate video titles for me and do a terrible job at it. And I don't want to set my account to English, because I guess it would translate French titles into English, which I want even less.

Re: Don't guess my language

#212

Post by xeeeeeeeeeeenu »

sph wrote: post #50
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.

Now Reddit results are translated as well in Google, Kagi, so you think you have found a relevant response in your language, but it's just a machine translation from an English post.

You can filter them out by adding this operator to the query:

    -inurl:?tl=

Re: Don't guess my language

#214

Post by sltkr »

vladkens wrote: post #129
leonheld wrote: post #122

While others have expressed sentiments about YouTube and Google, let me tell you what I really hate - translated reddit posts. They're polluting search results and it's the ultimate disrespect against multi-lingual users... it's made my life hell when trying to find localized information (for example, in Portuguese), when my computer is set to Portuguese but I'm searching in English.

Honestly, I don't even know what you're talking about – I don't have anything like that. Maybe it can be changed in the settings?

It's in the Google index, not on Reddit itself. For example: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Areddit.com+inurl:?tl=...

...will show you posts that have been translated into Italian, most of which were originally in English or a different language.

For example: https://www.reddit.com/r/horror/comments/1k2fotl/welcome_to_...

And of course in this case I explicitly searched for that, but the point is that if Google thinks Italian is your primary language, it will surface those results automatically, even when you might prefer the English original.

Probably this is caused by Reddit offering these pages to Google, rather than Google deciding to send you to a different URL on its own accord, but it's still annoying from an end user perspective.

Re: Don't guess my language

#215

Post by estebarb »

It is particularly annoying with Google. They recently forced results translations, which are of extremely bad quality. So, even if I'm searching for computer science topics or machine learning (where I'm only interested in English results) they insist that I must speak spanish and read useless translations.

I ended up switching to Bing just because this issue. Google is absolutely useless for me now.

Re: Don't guess my language

#216

Post by mulmen »

bmn__ wrote: post #180
e-topy wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in the Czech alphabet: a, á, b, c, č, d, ď, e, é, ě, ... Also, we regard 'Ch' as its own letter. So yeah, try sorting alphabetically. I'll wait.

perl -E'Unicode::Collate::Locale->new(locale => 'cs')->sort … … …' works. Test cases at https://prirucka.ujc.cas.cz/?action=view&id=900

I love some perl on Monday morning but how does this work when you don’t know the locale?

Re: Don't guess my language

#217

Post by lynguist »

nottorp wrote: post #99
q3k wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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!

Only thing is when suddenly “colour” and “centre” pops up in the menu that makes you double check what is actually meant

Re: Don't guess my language

#218

Post by bmn__ »

Vinnl wrote: post #174
dijit wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think thats bad logic on the server side and not to do with the concept of Accept-Language though. I would think the ideal prioritisation should probably be: * Exact (en_GB) * Exact (fr_CA) * Soft (en_*) // Any variant of English you might have available * Soft (fr_*) // Any variant of French you might have available * Translated. (to first preferred) for Accept-Language: “en_GB,fr_CA”

I don't think Accept-Language supports "Translated", "Exact" or "Soft"? But yes, that would match the language setting that GGP asked for.

This is expressed as the quality parameter. To make the system GP proposed work atop HTTP content-negotiation, a server operator should assign a very small number to the automatically translated content.

Re: Don't guess my language

#219

Post by nottorp »

lynguist wrote: post #217
nottorp wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Only thing is when suddenly “colour” and “centre” pops up in the menu that makes you double check what is actually meant

I tend to write british spelling, possibly because that's how they taught me in school. But I never notice the difference when reading.

I have to run into strong britishisms* like lad, tad, cuppa to remember there are differences across the pond.

* strong britishisms to me the non native speaker, at least.

Re: Don't guess my language

#220

Post by jiehong »

preisschild wrote: post #209
FinnLobsien wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

This would also be good for movies :D I can speak german, I don't need forced subtitles for the nazis

Sometimes we do, when actors actually don’t speak German very well (or Russian or Chinese or French)
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