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I'm Not Japanese

sachagreif.com

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Re: I'm Not Japanese

#21

Post by davidw »

patio11 wrote: post #3

>> Does Google assumes that we live in The Matrix, and you can learn a new country’s language instantly as soon as you move there? >> Google is making the (accurate) calculation that over 99% of people coming from a Japanese IP address whose computer says "Accept-Language: en-gb;q=0.9, en;q=0.7" are actually Japanese speakers of Japanese (true preference: "Accept-Language: ja-jp;q=1.0; en;q=0.000001") whose configura…

I am logged on to Google, and they know I want English results and an English interface, because I've gone through and done all the settings. And yet, occasionally something goes wonky and they start showing me the interface in Italian again.

I have no problems if their default is the local language - that's pretty much a no-brainer - but when I've told them in no uncertain terms what my own preferences are, they ought to respect that.

Re: I'm Not Japanese

#22

Post by JohnsonB »

patio11 wrote: post #3

>> Does Google assumes that we live in The Matrix, and you can learn a new country’s language instantly as soon as you move there? >> Google is making the (accurate) calculation that over 99% of people coming from a Japanese IP address whose computer says "Accept-Language: en-gb;q=0.9, en;q=0.7" are actually Japanese speakers of Japanese (true preference: "Accept-Language: ja-jp;q=1.0; en;q=0.000001") whose configura…

>Google is making the (accurate) calculation that over 99% of people coming from a Japanese IP address whose computer says "Accept-Language: en-gb;q=0.9, en;q=0.7" are actually Japanese speakers of Japanese

From the article:

>The problem is compounded by the fact that most of the time, you have no way of doing anything about it. And when you can do something, it’s often buried in layers of menus, which –don’t forget– are all in Japanese, Bhutanese, or Martian…

I think you're missing a key point in the article.

Re: I'm Not Japanese

#23

Post by seanmcdirmid »

This is a common expat pita. So you move to a new country, the digital world decides that you now must immerse yourself in that country. And its quite true: the expat demographic is minuscule so why bother accommodating it? Its only because the technical barriers for it not being that way are so low, that we expect the digital world to be different from the physical world, but really, each country has its own commerce laws and you have to essentially "break the rules" to say...operate your iTunes account from a non-local address so you can still buy things in English.

Google isn't so bad as long as you login; in fact the first hint I'm not logged in usually comes from a bunch of Chinese search results. Really, this isn't as big a deal as region coding, Netflix, Hulu, and VPNs that are constantly being attacked by your host government.

Re: I'm Not Japanese

#24

Post by rhizome »

zalew wrote: post #13
patio11 wrote: post #3

>> Does Google assumes that we live in The Matrix, and you can learn a new country’s language instantly as soon as you move there? >> Google is making the (accurate) calculation that over 99% of people coming from a Japanese IP address whose computer says "Accept-Language: en-gb;q=0.9, en;q=0.7" are actually Japanese speakers of Japanese (true preference: "Accept-Language: ja-jp;q=1.0; en;q=0.000001") whose configura…

> This is a hack around censorship laws in a few places (most relevantly to the instant case, Germany, I believe). Google has a blogspot.jp which is a copy of .com which is a copy of .de which is a copy of... except that they enforce country-specific censorship laws. This was deemed an acceptable tradeoff versus getting all of blogspot blacklisted in e.g. Germany. what event/law are you referring to? why blogspot sho…

All countries have different laws in this department, but moves to segment or restrict Internet content all kinda goes back to a French case against Yahoo a while back:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LICRA_v._Yahoo!

Re: I'm Not Japanese

#25

Post by sgdesign »

w00kie wrote: post #20

I have a similar compounded problem: I live in Japan, my systems are configured in English, but when I'm at the office my internet is routed through a proxy which is somehow localized to India (I have no idea where is its actual location). - I get Google in English most of the time (though sometimes it will pop back to Japanese) - Google account settings on the other hand will most of the time show in Japanese (I'm O…

Yes, but as far as I can tell the two settings are not for the Google UI and the Google Search Results (which would make sense). They're for Some Google Products (i.e. Google Plus) and Google Search (both UI and search results).

I might be mistaken on this, but I don't think there is a way to set the search results language independently of the UI language.

Re: I'm Not Japanese

#26

Post by seanmcdirmid »

zalew wrote: post #2

and the worst part is, it can be solved with a simple tiny link/dropdown 'language' in the header or footer, it's not rocket science.

...unless the language menu is itself localized. This happens so often its not funny. Even finding the language menu is hard, since its title often localized also.

Re: I'm Not Japanese

#27

Post by hessenwolf »

davidw wrote: post #21
patio11 wrote: post #3

>> Does Google assumes that we live in The Matrix, and you can learn a new country’s language instantly as soon as you move there? >> Google is making the (accurate) calculation that over 99% of people coming from a Japanese IP address whose computer says "Accept-Language: en-gb;q=0.9, en;q=0.7" are actually Japanese speakers of Japanese (true preference: "Accept-Language: ja-jp;q=1.0; en;q=0.000001") whose configura…

I am logged on to Google, and they know I want English results and an English interface, because I've gone through and done all the settings. And yet, occasionally something goes wonky and they start showing me the interface in Italian again. I have no problems if their default is the local language - that's pretty much a no-brainer - but when I've told them in no uncertain terms what my own preferences are, they oug…

It randomly flicks in and out of German for me all the time (I live in Germany). I have ravaged the settings to change this, but to little effect. At least I am gradually getting better at German!

Re: I'm Not Japanese

#28

Post by rhizome »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #7

This is one of the most infuriating things about traveling internationally. Sites that probably know more about me than I know about myself assume that I am a native of wherever I happen to be at the moment and make it difficult-to-impossible to alter that site behavior . If I was a completely anonymous user coming in from a location it would be an understandable. But I'm not anonymous, I am logged in to the same acc…

All of which is a case for delineating language content by TLD. It's easy enough, with fewer dialect subdirs than the monolithic techniques often employed by sites, but IME TLDs just offer a default with all the complications you describe carried from region to region.

But hey, Google's always been this way. Before you could even log in they used to have a "Settings" pane where you cuold set your language to be saved in a cookie. It would get lost all the time; you'd always have to reset it.

Re: I'm Not Japanese

#29

Post by zalew »

patio11 wrote: post #19
zalew wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a hack around censorship laws in a few places (most relevantly to the instant case, Germany, I believe). Google has a blogspot.jp which is a copy of .com which is a copy of .de which is a copy of... except that they enforce country-specific censorship laws. This was deemed an acceptable tradeoff versus getting all of blogspot blacklisted in e.g. Germany. what event/law are you referring to? why blogspot sho…

Germany has many laws which are different that e.g. the USA. In particular, in the US certain sentiments which are politically and socially radioactive are protected by the US Constitution and the laws, traditions, and expectations of the American polity. Germany is similar in some regards but there is one particular politically and socially radioactive statement you could make -- support for the Nazi Party -- which,…

I know Germany and many other countries in Europe are more sensitive about promoting extreme viewpoints. My question was more about something specific related to censoring blogspot, and how the domain redirects are used to bypass that. I mean, how does it matter what domain is used to display the same content? OP says he's redirected to blogspot.jp - what problems does it solve for Google?

Re: I'm Not Japanese

#30

Post by w00kie »

sgdesign wrote: post #25
w00kie wrote: post #20

I have a similar compounded problem: I live in Japan, my systems are configured in English, but when I'm at the office my internet is routed through a proxy which is somehow localized to India (I have no idea where is its actual location). - I get Google in English most of the time (though sometimes it will pop back to Japanese) - Google account settings on the other hand will most of the time show in Japanese (I'm O…

Yes, but as far as I can tell the two settings are not for the Google UI and the Google Search Results (which would make sense). They're for Some Google Products (i.e. Google Plus) and Google Search (both UI and search results). I might be mistaken on this, but I don't think there is a way to set the search results language independently of the UI language.

I just tried it out and found this: http://i.imgur.com/KL0bW.png

Interestingly, I did a search through Chrome to get to the Google search results page, I was not logged in and everything was in English. I proceed to login and get reverted to Japanese (not my default). As I said before, my settings keep getting changed automagically all the time...

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