why are website language switchers in the current language?
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It would be way more user-friendly to use the language in the HTTP headers. As a web developer the fact that websites are too stupid to do this really grinds my gears. This is just as bad as assuming the language/region from the geolocation of the IP address.
C’mon guys…
My Pixel started giving me distances in miles once because I had the system language to English. I needed to change it to English (German) to show me meters. I don't know if they reverted that but at this point I am too afraid to change it.
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Yes, but it doesn't solve the problem. Even when a website does that, they might still have a switcher to let you override.
We do both.
A) use the language set by the user in their os/browser
B) switcher shows the language name in that languageDone, easy, etc. IMO the hard part are great translations and designs that work in languages where every word is a novel. And yet, here we are.
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My Pixel started giving me distances in miles once because I had the system language to English. I needed to change it to English (German) to show me meters. I don't know if they reverted that but at this point I am too afraid to change it.
That's just how locales work. When you set the language, you also get the associated date/time representation, unit system, etc
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Be that as it may, I honestly don't see what difference that would make in regards to OP's point... While it is spmewhat rather ironic, their argument over choice of word(s) in this particular situation is - imo, anyway- not one of semantics, but more of localization.
Either way, whether this is a language selector or region switcher (or any variation on such a theme for that matter), I believe the point OP was - correctly, if you ask me - making is: Whenever a UX/UI element is needed to prompt for proper display language, each language should be displayed however it appears in its native tongue as opposed to how it appears in whatever language is currently selected.
As an added bonus, this also solves the problem of a user inadvertently changing the language (or forgetting to lock their workstation when leaving briefly and returning to find it changed to "help them remember to lock their station when not in active use" allegedly... not that that's happened to anyone I know or anything) and being unable to change it back due to not knowing how to spell "English" in Japanese, for example.
Be that as it may, I honestly don’t see what difference that would make in regards to OP’s point…
OP said that it's from the Fairphone website. The website has separate settings for language and region, language is shown in English and in the language itself, i.e. "Dutch / Nederlands", region is shown in the current language. So the website is actually doing what OP wants.
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This always annoys me. I land on a site that's in a language I don't understand (say, Dutch), and I want to switch to something else. I open the language selector and... it's all in Dutch too. So instead of Germany/Deutchland, Romania/România, Great Britain, etc, I get Duitsland and Roemenië and Groot-Brittannië...
How does that make any sense? If I don't speak the language, how am I supposed to know what Roemenië even is? In some situations, it could be easier to figure it out, but in some, not so much. "German" in Polish is "Niemiecki"...
Wouldn't it be way more user-friendly to show the names in their native language, like Deutsch, Română, English, Polski, etc?
Is there a reason this is still a thing, or is it just bad UX that nobody bothers to fix?
I've seen language switchers with translated language names that were sorted by the English name. So "Deutsch" was sorted under G.
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This always annoys me. I land on a site that's in a language I don't understand (say, Dutch), and I want to switch to something else. I open the language selector and... it's all in Dutch too. So instead of Germany/Deutchland, Romania/România, Great Britain, etc, I get Duitsland and Roemenië and Groot-Brittannië...
How does that make any sense? If I don't speak the language, how am I supposed to know what Roemenië even is? In some situations, it could be easier to figure it out, but in some, not so much. "German" in Polish is "Niemiecki"...
Wouldn't it be way more user-friendly to show the names in their native language, like Deutsch, Română, English, Polski, etc?
Is there a reason this is still a thing, or is it just bad UX that nobody bothers to fix?
Perfectly comprehensible if you speak english, look:
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Just bad UX design. Typically this should include flags or the language's name in the language if they really did a good job.
What flag do you use for english ?
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Just bad UX design. Typically this should include flags or the language's name in the language if they really did a good job.
What flag is for English? What flag is for Portuguese? What about Austria, do they got a language? What do we put under Chinese flag, Mandarin? Where do Cantonese go? Oh, what about Belarusian? There are at least three options, and two could get you in jail, choose carefully.
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I've seen language switchers with translated language names that were sorted by the English name. So "Deutsch" was sorted under G.
It's not my fault if the Scrum Master can't provide a proper scope in the ticket. They said change the names, not the sorting.
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What flag do you use for english ?
Use the UK flag if the site is in English and use the American flag if it's in Webster English. Seems pretty evident to me.
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Perfectly comprehensible if you speak english, look:
Is that real?
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I've seen language switchers with translated language names that were sorted by the English name. So "Deutsch" was sorted under G.
Yeah that happened on Microsofts knowledgebase sites for years...
So annoying. But cant blame such a small company for not fixing that, they probably couldn't afford to fix it /s
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I've seen language switchers with translated language names that were sorted by the English name. So "Deutsch" was sorted under G.
What language would you sort them by?
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That's just how locales work. When you set the language, you also get the associated date/time representation, unit system, etc
And that is just an example of horrible UI. Locales should not be tied to those things. Maybe set the defaults but not forced.
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It's not my fault if the Scrum Master can't provide a proper scope in the ticket. They said change the names, not the sorting.
The scrum master is not a product owner and shouldn't be providing scope or anything for that matter in tickets. No wonder agile is hated and dying, it's been corrupted beyond recognition by people who have no reading comprehension.
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My Pixel started giving me distances in miles once because I had the system language to English. I needed to change it to English (German) to show me meters. I don't know if they reverted that but at this point I am too afraid to change it.
I have my Google Account set to English, but YouTube still autotranslates all video titles of newer videos to German for some reason...
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That's just how locales work. When you set the language, you also get the associated date/time representation, unit system, etc
Yeah but it didn't say locale or location, it said system language, that is what i was confused about language =/= location.
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That's just how locales work. When you set the language, you also get the associated date/time representation, unit system, etc
But you should be able to set the locale separately from language. You can easily do that on any Unix/Linux system. In your locale.conf, set LANG to your language and all other LC_* variables to your preferred locale.
Systems that do not allow this are badly designed. For a lot of multilingual people, locale and preferred language are independent.
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Use the UK flag if the site is in English and use the American flag if it's in Webster English. Seems pretty evident to me.
A split combo of the two is pretty common.
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This always annoys me. I land on a site that's in a language I don't understand (say, Dutch), and I want to switch to something else. I open the language selector and... it's all in Dutch too. So instead of Germany/Deutchland, Romania/România, Great Britain, etc, I get Duitsland and Roemenië and Groot-Brittannië...
How does that make any sense? If I don't speak the language, how am I supposed to know what Roemenië even is? In some situations, it could be easier to figure it out, but in some, not so much. "German" in Polish is "Niemiecki"...
Wouldn't it be way more user-friendly to show the names in their native language, like Deutsch, Română, English, Polski, etc?
Is there a reason this is still a thing, or is it just bad UX that nobody bothers to fix?
If people really insist then at least have a flag emoji
