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I'm Not Japanese

sachagreif.com

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Re: I'm Not Japanese

#61

Post by printer »

aristidb wrote: post #52

Actually, this problem also exists for native speakers in their own countries. I'm a German in Germany, yet when I'm searching for technical terms, in the overwhelming majority I want English results because they are better. (The German results are often just blog posts regurgitating what somebody else wrote in English.) It used to be that I could use www.google.de for German searches, and www.google.com/ncr for Engl…

On Google Search: Options -> Search settings -> Languages

There you can change the language(s) of your search result. I think you can mark up to 10 languages.

Re: I'm Not Japanese

#62

Post by ZoFreX »

shock3naw wrote: post #55
rickmb wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Google is making the (completely wrong) assumption that those people cannot type google.co.jp instead of google.com and make their own choices. But at least in Japan they're probably right about the language. Goo…

Google isn't being lazy & insensitive. I18N is hard.

> I18N is hard.

Understatement.

Re: I'm Not Japanese

#64

Post by lynnae »

xiaoma wrote: post #47

I hate this trend, too. I've always felt that if I go to the .com, then it should offer English by default. If I go to google.co.jp, then you can show me Japanese. Living in Taiwan, I did slowly get used to the traditional Chinese character web. But there's no way I want to or even can go through that every time I take a week-long trip somewhere. Respect the language settings of my browser, or even my machine as a re…

Why should .com be an automatic english language domain? It defines no single country.

co.uk co.us co.au

for example, I'd be surprised if they defaulted to anything other than English for a public website. But not .com

Re: I'm Not Japanese

#65

Post by nandemo »

rickmb wrote: post #36
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 Google is making the (completely wrong) assumption that those people cannot type google.co.jp instead of google.com and make their own choices. But at least in Japan they're probably right about the language. Goo…

> Google is making the (completely wrong) assumption that those people cannot type google.co.jp instead of google.com and make their own choices.

You're making the completely unsupported assumption that the average internet user understands domain names. Like patio11 suggested, if a user from a Japanese IP is accessing google.com, it's likely that this address was pre-configured in some way: the search bar was set up like that, or the company sysadmin set up the home page like that. But even if the user manually typed "google.com", if they're in Japan it's still (way) more likely that they wanted a Japanese version rather than the English one.

Re: I'm Not Japanese

#66

Post by spindritf »

ktizo wrote: post #53
rickmb wrote: post #34

This kind of thing pisses me off regularly. Google is one of the worst offenders, completely ignoring browser language preferences. But American websites in general are awful at this. They completely ignore local diversity and sensitivities and simply assume "one country, one language", so they will for instance happily present Flemish users with French interfaces. It's fucking offensive. If I type google.com instead…

It is slightly more offensive to assume that .com + browser settings == english above the country you are originating from, if you aren't speaking english, anyway.

> .com + browser settings == english

Browsers are often configured improperly and it's not always practical to rely on them but it definitely isn't offensive to follow the explicit preferences sent by the browser.

Re: I'm Not Japanese

#67

Post by CrLf »

Desktop applications on Windows are particularly prone to this kind of thing. If you happen to have an english version of Windows, but the locale (timezone, currency) set to another region, many applications assume you also want the interface in that region's language.

This is extremely annoying (especially when there's no way to choose the language manually) and moreso considering there's a way to know the language of the system.

Re: I'm Not Japanese

#68

Post by Nicole060 »

I use Windows with an English localization and most of the software installers irk me to no end by defaulting to French because they don't rely on the system language but my location.

I also hate the fact that I have to do something as cumbersome as putting the browser in private mode whenever I'm using someone else's computer to make a search on the english side of google since, like for japan, google.com redirects to google.fr instead of letting me use the US database so I have to go in the preferences and do so in private mode so as to not mess with the cookies as they wouldn't be pleased if their google permanently turned English even on google.fr. God damn it.

Hey GOOGLE, domain names are not just for show, FFS. If I want the French edition, I'll go to google.fr. If I want it in English, I'll go to google.com. Don't mess with something that worked rather well since the beginning of the Internet.

I hate programmers who try to write "smart" software. Software that makes attempts at thinking in your stead. Fuck off ! I know what I want, you don't need to make annoying guess works.

Re: I'm Not Japanese

#69

Post by Nicole060 »

aristidb wrote: post #52

Actually, this problem also exists for native speakers in their own countries. I'm a German in Germany, yet when I'm searching for technical terms, in the overwhelming majority I want English results because they are better. (The German results are often just blog posts regurgitating what somebody else wrote in English.) It used to be that I could use www.google.de for German searches, and www.google.com/ncr for Engl…

Exactly. When it comes to the world of programming and IT, English is the lingua franca. I'm French but spend 99% of my time on the English-speaking web. The French edition of Google is only good at pissing me off.

Re: I'm Not Japanese

#70

Post by aristidb »

printer wrote: post #61
aristidb wrote: post #52

Actually, this problem also exists for native speakers in their own countries. I'm a German in Germany, yet when I'm searching for technical terms, in the overwhelming majority I want English results because they are better. (The German results are often just blog posts regurgitating what somebody else wrote in English.) It used to be that I could use www.google.de for German searches, and www.google.com/ncr for Engl…

On Google Search: Options -> Search settings -> Languages There you can change the language(s) of your search result. I think you can mark up to 10 languages.

Except it still gives me mostly bad German results for technical queries if I don't completely remove German there.
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