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Don't guess my language

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Re: Don't guess my language

#71

Post by davedx »

anilakar wrote: post #69

Going one step further: do not guess my regional preferences from my language. I want to have an American English UI but use little-endian dates, whitespace and comma as thousands and decimal separators, ISO week numbers in calendars (with Monday being the first day of the week), and metric units. I want English subtitles, but not ones meant for the hearing impaired.

Mmm... understandable, but less trivial to implement than the OP. What you're requesting is quite a lot of localization customization. Reasonable to expect this from say, Google Sheets, but you might be out of luck with apps with smaller budgets.

Re: Don't guess my language

#72

Post by nilslindemann »

fifnir wrote: post #66
sph wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've been noticing the same, this completely breaks searching for reddit results for me

Try "Reddit Untranslate" addon.

Re: Don't guess my language

#73

Post by e-topy »

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…

And it even remembers what you chose last time and pushes it to the top. That is UX. Being actually helpful and not fucking annoying.

Re: Don't guess my language

#74

Post by gield »

This is a real pain in the ass in Belgium. Many websites assume I speak French while my native language is Dutch. Some websites only offer a French version of their Belgian storefront, even though Dutch accounts for ~60% of Belgians. I can't imagine what it's like for German-speaking Belgians.

This is not only an issue on websites but also on apps. For example, the Books and Podcasts apps on iOS show me both Dutch-speaking and French-speaking titles. I tried to raise this issue back when I worked at Apple but they only have 1 storefront per country and didn't feel like changing it.

Re: Don't guess my language

#75

Post by donatj »

Aachen wrote: post #65
donatj wrote: post #21

I have told the story here before, but I built a neat little system to parse Accept-Language weighing the users priorities and using the closest thing we have on offer to the users preferences. As an example, we have a Brazilian Portuguese translation but not Portugal Portuguese, so we would offer the prior to users requesting the latter for instance unless they had a lower priority but more exact match. From my tech…

You ask, as in, whenever I visit the site without having your cookies stored, I'll get a language selector wall first? I run into those regularly and it's always a struggle to know how to stay on the damn page I clicked on: will the "continue" button use the preselected value or will it dismiss the pop-up and continue on the current page?If the former, is the preselected value the page I'm on or a different language?…

We're a paid SaaS so I don't think it's as much of an annoyance to be asked once per browser.

It's just a separate page you hit after signing in if we don't have your preference. You click on the language you want and you are redirected to the dashboard.

The option to change it still exists in the footer.

Re: Don't guess my language

#76

Post by Aachen »

nottorp wrote: post #12

Don't guess what currency I want to pay in either by the way. Your payment provider's automatic conversion is most likely more predatory than my bank's so I don't want to use it. And even if you guess my location right, how do you know I want a badly/machine translated web site?

This. Related: if I had a penny for every time I needed a VPN just to load the payment method selection screen (but not for the actual payment, it's not geolocked) just to be able to pay somewhere, I'd get a lot of products for free by now...

Why not let germans select iDeal and dutch users Giropay? They'll not click it if it's not useful for them. Adjusting the sort for what's most commonly used makes sense, but why actively thwart users from paying by geolocking payment methods by IP address...

Re: Don't guess my language

#77

Post by southernplaces7 »

One of the many, many tedious things about the modern globe-spanning internet, used by hundreds of millions of people who regularly travel far and wide, is this bizarre, stupid forced algorithmic balkanization in which you're pigeonholed right into either being denied access to certain content based on your location, or having your supposed language tendencies modified by default.

I'm not sure what the purpose of this idiocy is. Is it a dark pattern of some kind? Or is it just so hard for grey, cubicle-dwelling functionaries at companies that are themselves often very international to set systems for leaving one's language defaults static unless otherwise adjusted by said site user?

If you're already tracking me and every single one of my digital activities through my devices, then at least give me some modicum of convenience from all the bother.

Re: Don't guess my language

#78

Post by CaptArmchair »

binarymax wrote: post #22

Timely. I’m working on this right now for a product and have everything in place using the accept-language header and then adding a url param. I’m currently agonizing about how to let the user change their language, because I want to respect locale as well (es-MX vs es-ES for example). And I haven’t found a good UX pattern for changing language+locale. I’ll likely just implement a big list that the user can select, a…

As someone who lives in one of those locations mentioned in the article: split out locale and language into different settings. Because they are not the same thing. This article explains that nicely. [1]

You want your users to be able to change their location (and, therefore, locale) and their language independently. The Accept-Language header could be used as a sentinel for language. Then again, I wouldn't outright rely on geoIP to set the locale which is an umbrella for regional differing variables like timezone, date formatting, currency, VAT / Taxes,...

I think it's okay to have your content served, by default, in a language that reflects either the majority of your target audience; or the culture / place you're based in. Changing the locale / language should follow a clear UI pattern e.g. a language switcher & locale switcher in the header; or a clear navigational aid pointing to a context menu. That's how Hetzner works, for instance. Another example is Deliveroo.

[1] https://translatepress.com/locale-vs-language/

Re: Don't guess my language

#79

Post by genocidicbunny »

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.

Not only the titles, but also the audio track. There's a few youtubers I regularly watch who are trying to branch out into some additional languages by providing fan-made translated audio tracks, and english is sometimes one of those. Every single time I watch one of those videos, I have to manually set the language back to the original because often the translations lose some of the word play or hidden meaning in the original language. Often it also means I need to rewind the video because it started playing before all the controls have loaded (because youtube hates FF with youtube-related extensions) and I could swap the language track back.

One of the sister replies linked to an extension to help with that, which I'm going to give a try, but it's annoying that there's not a simple toggle in the youtube settings to tell it to always use the original language. On the rare occasion that I want to use the translated audio track, I can do _that_ on my own; I speak enough languages that this is a very rare occasion with the type of content I watch.

This isn't even something I can understand as them being hostile to ad blocking or wanting to push ads. This is a 'convenience' feature that is just poorly implemented. But I'm sure there's some PM that got a pat on the back for it.

Re: Don't guess my language

#80

Post by FinnLobsien »

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!

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?

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