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Don't guess my language

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Re: Don't guess my language

#251

Post by hombre_fatal »

TheJoeMan wrote: post #148
elric wrote: post #63

Not accepting Accept-Language is one of my major pet peeves. What makes it worse is that many multilingual websites translate their language-switching buttons and the list of languages to the current language .... which is beyond fucking stupid and defeats the purpose. Wikipedia does this right. The button to switch languages is clear, using a universal multilanguage icon, and a list of languages (using the name of t…

I can give a perfect bad example: the Youtube app on my iPhone somehow determined to change to Amharic. This is the Google support article: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/87604 telling me the buttons to press in English. Also, I don't know/speak Amharic, and so at the time had no idea what language it was, and the iPhone translate doesn't even recognize this Ethiopian language. Bit of a pickle that could h…

You can set the language individually per app in the iOS settings. But I thought it defaulted to your global setting.

Re: Don't guess my language

#252

Post by nulld3v »

makeitdouble wrote: post #123
nulld3v wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, Accept-Language is an ordered list, and most daily-multilingual people don't have an absolute order of preference, and more a topical list of preferences. Technically Accept-Language allows you to specify a "quality value"/weight for each language... https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Reference/... IMO there is a lot of improvements that can be made by both the browser and websites: Websites s…

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…

> 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.

Yup, agreed. I highly doubt most websites even look at those weights in the Accept-Language header anyways.

Having a list of supported langs in the manifest costs nothing. Lazy-load the manifest when the user goes to use the language selection dropdown, or when the response from the server is in a different language than the one requested in Accept-Language (check Content-Language or html `lang` attr).

Looks like there's a name for this, but no standard: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Guides/Con...

Re: Don't guess my language

#253

Post by FinnLobsien »

bunderbunder wrote: post #230
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?

> Why is it so hard to just add something as a setting/feature and offer it to people without forcing it on the user? Office politics. Google is famously "performance-driven", so the manager in charge of that feature needs usage metrics to be high for the sake of their own career. (Speculating, of course.)

That's a funny idea—if the KPI was boosting adoption of a feature and the PM just made that feature the default and suddenly adoption was through the roof.

The sad part is we can't rule that out.

Re: Don't guess my language

#254

Post by frollogaston »

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.

If buying on the same platform unlocks more languages, that sounds even more like a copyright thing

Re: Don't guess my language

#255

Post by adastra22 »

bmn__ wrote: post #162
CGamesPlay wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in alphabetical order Well, it's in an order, but I don't know about alphabetical. I clicked on today's English featured article and looked at the languages: "中文", "Italiano" are "suggested", then the remainder are grouped by geographic region, and aren't particularly alphabetical. They appear to be in groups which are still not alphabetical. Europe seems to have a Cyrillic group but "Қазақша" is shown after "Украї…

> how you can't "alphabetize" language names Not so, this sort order has been standardised as part of Unicode for at least 28 years. To see it in action, pipe the list of languages as a text file through a conforming tool like `ucsort`. When Қ is falsely sorted after Ч, then the wrong algorithm or no algorithm at all has been used. > because of course, K for Korean alphabetizes after C for Chinese That's not how it w…

Sort rules are different in different locales.

Re: Don't guess my language

#256

Post by adastra22 »

philistine wrote: post #181
nis251413 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t special characters always go after the Latin alphabet? I think this is pretty common, and fairly expected behaviour. Of course nothing is perfect but I feel like the way Wikipedia handles it is consistent.

That’s English hegemony. Languages have their own sorting that they expect. You can’t impose rules to other languages. Of course at some point Unicode needs to be ordered, but you don’t get to impose technical details to people around the world because it matches with how English does it. That’s where geo-ip guessing becomes relevant. Show a list with the most likely languages at the top.

That’s not English sort order either.

Re: Don't guess my language

#257

Post by genocidicbunny »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #179
genocidicbunny wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It should be absolutely clear, when i speak English and German, do not auto-translate any video title in those languages to the other. You wouldn't believe how bad the translations are, and how unwanted by me (the user). Worse when you speak a third or fourth language, and tend to watch videos. It gets messy.

Yeah I know, I watch videos in six different languages and the automatic translation are pretty universally bad.

Re: Don't guess my language

#258

Post by adastra22 »

tlb wrote: post #188
elric wrote: post #63

Not accepting Accept-Language is one of my major pet peeves. What makes it worse is that many multilingual websites translate their language-switching buttons and the list of languages to the current language .... which is beyond fucking stupid and defeats the purpose. Wikipedia does this right. The button to switch languages is clear, using a universal multilanguage icon, and a list of languages (using the name of t…

There are two levels of this. If I get some other European language, I can generally figure out which is their word for English and it's not a big deal to switch. But if it gives me a script I don't know, like Bengali or something, it's a problem. Perhaps every "choose language" menu should include English and Chinese in non-localized form, as an escape hatch, since almost every web users can recognize enough of them…

Just include languages in their own script only. Why would a user need to select a language from that menu for which they DON’T know the target script? Showing Bengali in Bengali script is exactly what you want.

Re: Don't guess my language

#259

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Don't guess my language

#260

Post by genocidicbunny »

Denvercoder9 wrote: post #238
genocidicbunny wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It was more of an example in how they pick up on _some_ signal about a users language preference and then arrogantly assume they're correct in their decision, and that it's the user's fault if they assumed wrong.
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