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Don't guess my language

vitonsky.net

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Re: Don't guess my language

#231

Post by sgt »

lblume wrote: post #96
sgt wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am using Chrome and I have no idea how to change the browser language. I mean, I could probably find out.. digging into Preferences.

That's a silly solution in any case, since you literally use the browser for other sites. Dozens of tabs.

Re: Don't guess my language

#232

Post by miki123211 »

Clearly there is some reason to do this.

I mean, Google does it, and they employ some of the most brilliant people on the planet. Showing people their website in the wrong language is clearly losing them money, so minimizing that is a very direct way to increase profits. There must be some reason they rely on IP more than on Accept-Language. They don't leave money lying around, and there's no way Google engineers aren't aware of that header.

I don't know why they do it, but somehow Accept-Language must be less reliable than IP. No other explanation makes sense in this context.

Re: Don't guess my language

#233

Post by yfkar »

Once my Google suddenly turned into Hebrew (I'm Finnish so that was pretty wtf). It was around the 2023 Hamas attacks so I initially wondered if I'd been hacked by some pro-Israeli group. Soon I realized it only happened if I used my home network and then restarting my router to get a new IP fixed it.

Re: Don't guess my language

#234

Post by makeitdouble »

poulpy123 wrote: post #154
makeitdouble wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fundamentally the issue for me is, this behavior can't be automated in an elegant way. Having priorities and weight and language lists in the manifest help for negociation, but at the core of it, the user will want to choose language based on context and content. > Language selection should be done on the client side, not on the server. Yes. Using a site specific list on the client side could also do it (let's say I…

It cannot be fully automated but if we can automatically select a language based on native or translated it would cover 99% of use cases

That's IMO the original sin: no automatic selection will cover 99% of use cases, that in itself it to me a fantasy that isn't worth pursuing.

People are complicated and having simple heuristics to predict what more than half of them want is not feasible at our level of technology.

Sure any single person will have somewhat simple rules to decide what languages they want, you could come up with simple rules for the people in your life. But you're not trying to solve it for a specific group of people. The target is 8 billion people, most of which we have no idea what their life is.

Re: Don't guess my language

#235

Post by the_snooze »

Not just language. Some retailers' websites (e.g., Target, Home Depot) use IP geolocation to guess the nearest store to you. It'll even override your preferred store if you set it to the correct one earlier. If you're on a cellular connection, it's absolutely useless.

To anyone working in tech: stop trying to outsmart the user.

Re: Don't guess my language

#236

Post by marcosdumay »

lucasoshiro wrote: post #177
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.

> I can understand English and don't need these automatic translations I think it is far worse than that: 1. If I don't understand a language, probably that video is not for me. Most videos targeted for international audience are in English, or at least the author translated it by theirself. 2. Titles are small sentences, and they don't have enough context to be translated. Once I saw a video called something like "V…

There's a video that Youtube keeps sending me with a translated title "O segredo das lavadouras" (what translates to "the secret of washing machines") that is about picking screw washers...

But the real problem is when it decides to translate the titles of some perfectly watchable videos in English into something that uses the Cyrillic alphabet, what has no relation to my accepted languages, and is only used half-way across the world from where I am.

Re: Don't guess my language

#237

Post by jiehong »

deanc wrote: post #42

I live in Finland where they have two native languages: Finnish & Swedish. In a lot of places you'll see both the Finnish & Swedish place name on road signs. Without getting into politics, it's a good assumption to assume that Finnish is the mother-tongue of most of the population - with some areas having Swedish as their native language but also perfectly capable of speaking Finnish fluently. I have my phone's langu…

Maps is so annoying for that: I travel to France, Italy and Germany on the road, and language is set to English on the phone, so it tries to pronounce everything the English way, and I can’t understand anything.

I wish I could set a "read location/road names in local language" setting.

Re: Don't guess my language

#238

Post by Denvercoder9 »

genocidicbunny wrote: post #86
troupo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect the idea that a person speaks more than one language is absent in US silicon valley. Which has been baffling to me considering how many foreigners work at these companies.

I think it's more a matter of "why would they have their system language set to X if they speak Y? If they want Y, they should just set their system language to Y!" It's the idea that the user has a preference for something, and it applies always and everywhere, even when it's not applicable.

> why would they have their system language set to X if they speak Y? If they want Y, they should just set their system language to Y!

If only they respected my system language. All my language settings are set to English, yet I routinely get autotranslated crap to my native language.

Re: Don't guess my language

#239

Post by netsharc »

jiehong wrote: post #222
netsharc wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is there's licensing issues, i.e. the Japanese language dub isn't licensed to be played in Finland... in this case the moronity is due to copyright laws/lawyers.

I don’t buy that argument. Sometimes if you buy the movie you have more audio choices, on the same platform. If you buy the Blu-ray, you likely have tons of languages not present in the streamed video.

And streaming vs. distribution licensing laws differ... ask a copyright lawyer near you.

Re: Don't guess my language

#240

Post by dgb23 »

avhception wrote: post #34
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.

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!

Same here. My native tongue is German, I live in Switzerland, but my settings on all devices are English.

I do this on purpose, because I find everything is more searchable. I don't even know any German terms for most technical things I might search or look for. So even if the automatic translations were good, which they aren't, this would be a non-feature.

My browser already tells them what my preferred language is. Just use it.

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