why are website language switchers in the current language?
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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.
Yeah, Japan as a country uses kilometers, and Rawhide Kobayashi has an easier time reading things on his phone in Japanese, but his heart craves the measurement units of his true home, Texas.
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The reality is, it varies.
I just opened the language picker on the first site I had in my browser tabs (happened to be Epic games) and they display the language list using native names for the target language, rather than current language (screenshot attached)
I agree it's much better to do it this way.
As a developer, why it doesn't happen sometimes could just be by accident. If you intentionally set out to localise a site and put all text and menu elements into localisation files to be translated, then the language names are going to end up getting translated too. It takes conscious thought and UX design to realise that it's better for accessibility if that single part of the site is actually just static text, regardless of what language is selected.
And before anyone suggests using country flags in your language picker as a cool solution - please don't, because that sucks too. There isn't a 1:1 relationship between countries and languages and so the flag approach is a flawed compromise at best, and actually insulting at worst.
Yeah okay but imagine clicking the option with an Israeli flag and suddenly the website is in Arabic. That's too funny to pass up.
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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?
Ive had multiple situations on websites or in games where i accidentally switched the language to like- japanese or something and then had to fumble around trying to switch it back. On websites at least you can translate to find the right option but i recently installed a game on my steamdeck and the input was all screwed up, and while trying to fix it i accidentally switched the language and then navigated away from the menu. Trying to get back to the right setting with broken input and not understanding anything wasnt fun.
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In an international context, not everybody speaks English. A Japanese customer wants to switch to French. Which language should the language picker be in?
Alternative is to put the flag of each language next to the name in the picker. That way, whoever doesn't read the current language can at least pick by icon.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]The annoying thing is, you can't put an image in the default select from browsers.
So you have two choices :- Make a custom select -> it's complicated and will break on some machines.
- Use emoji flags -> windows do not have an image pack for flag emoji, and chrome didn't bother implementing their own (Firefox did), so it displays the initials instead.
So whatever you do will not be universally supported, thank you Microsoft.
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In an international context, not everybody speaks English. A Japanese customer wants to switch to French. Which language should the language picker be in?
Alternative is to put the flag of each language next to the name in the picker. That way, whoever doesn't read the current language can at least pick by icon.
Have the language in the current language setting and the target language native tongue so you would get
フランス語 / French
"Alphabetic" sorting would be difficult, so it wouldn't be perfect, but at least a lot more understandable. Still, just having a search option would fix that easily. -
Out of curiosity, would you put Deutsch before or after 日本語?
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Before, since D and G are both before N ("nihongo") and J ("japanese")
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Yeah okay but imagine clicking the option with an Israeli flag and suddenly the website is in Arabic. That's too funny to pass up.
Probably not so funny other way around hah
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In an international context, not everybody speaks English. A Japanese customer wants to switch to French. Which language should the language picker be in?
Alternative is to put the flag of each language next to the name in the picker. That way, whoever doesn't read the current language can at least pick by icon.
The label for the language picker is an issue, but the choices themselves? In the target language. You want French? You pick "Français". You want Japanese? You pick "日本語". You want english? You pick "English".
Supposedly, if you'd rather have a website in a given language, you must have some level of understanding of that language, and picking its name should not be a challenge in any case. If you somehow change a site/app to a language you don't know, as long as you can identify the language picker, you'll be able to change to something you understand.
It does leave out the case of a user wanting to change to a language they do not understand, but I do not care for those.
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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…
I'm pretty sure nobody's doing that based on geoip. Client-side, the browser exposes the user's languages choices. And server side, the HTTP header can help. But geoip is totally unreliable, even a broken salesman would not sell that as a feature.
Well ok they would sell it but get a very heavy glance from the dev team.
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Yeeeah, I don't know, it's an interesting UX question. For language selection, sure. For country? There are plenty of reasons why you may need to select a country name and not be clear on the native spelling of its name. Plus how do you end up in a country selector list in a language you don't understand?
I'll say that flagging the language selector for international users is even harder than the list itself. If you don't have an icon for it in particular. You can make the name cycle, but depending on where it's at it can be distracting or impractical. Accidentally changing the language to Hungarian (which may as well be an alien language, for how unrecognizeable its roots are if you don't speak it) was one of the few times I ended up having to delete a config file just to be able to use a piece of software again because I just could not find the lanuage selector after that.
Plus how do you end up in a country selector list in a language you don't understand?
By clicking random buttons hoping to find the one that changes the language to one you can understand?
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The annoying thing is, you can't put an image in the default select from browsers.
So you have two choices :- Make a custom select -> it's complicated and will break on some machines.
- Use emoji flags -> windows do not have an image pack for flag emoji, and chrome didn't bother implementing their own (Firefox did), so it displays the initials instead.
So whatever you do will not be universally supported, thank you Microsoft.
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If people really insist then at least have a flag emoji
No, flags for languages are a bad thing.
- If you put a Swiss flag, what language would it be? (They speak 4 languages in Switzerland)
- What flag would you use for English? The UK? The US?
More details here: https://localizejs.com/articles/why-using-flag-icons-can-confuse-your-users
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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?
Do I speak Ierland-ish? Mabey not, could be weird, but I got the one that must be Italian, and then I can pick English from there. Except I glossed over Groot-Brit.... because Groot couldn't be what I was looking for.
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Flags don't represent languages and therefore shouldn't be used to represent languages.
Typically they're used for the counties where the language originated.
UK for English
France for French
Japan for Japanese
Spain for Spanish
Russia for Russian
Portugal for Portuguese -
Flags don't make sense.
Otherwise this is completely valid:( ) German
( ) Italian
( ) JapaneseTell me... Where did, roughly speaking, German originate? Germany, perhaps?
Does Germany have a flag?
Not sure why this is some sort of hidden secret code.
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Tell me... Where did, roughly speaking, German originate? Germany, perhaps?
Does Germany have a flag?
Not sure why this is some sort of hidden secret code.
There are some German dialects that only survive (barely) in Brazil.
And the German language is much older than Germany.
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Tell me... Where did, roughly speaking, German originate? Germany, perhaps?
Does Germany have a flag?
Not sure why this is some sort of hidden secret code.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]German language as we know it now, predates Germany by at least 500 years, originated, roughly speaking, in the area that is now Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and in small part Belgium and Netherlands.
It only simple and easy if you don't know about it and don't care. But people who use the language, surprisingly, do care. -
Typically they're used for the counties where the language originated.
UK for English
France for French
Japan for Japanese
Spain for Spanish
Russia for Russian
Portugal for PortugueseNo, typically they aren't, and if they do it's a bad idea. Only 4% of L1 Portuguese speakers live in Portugal. There is 4 languages in Switzerland. German originated in at least 3 countries. USisans will throw a hissy fit if they will have to click on anything but their favourite star spangled banner for their language.
It's a mess. -
The label for the language picker is an issue, but the choices themselves? In the target language. You want French? You pick "Français". You want Japanese? You pick "日本語". You want english? You pick "English".
Supposedly, if you'd rather have a website in a given language, you must have some level of understanding of that language, and picking its name should not be a challenge in any case. If you somehow change a site/app to a language you don't know, as long as you can identify the language picker, you'll be able to change to something you understand.
It does leave out the case of a user wanting to change to a language they do not understand, but I do not care for those.
Why not do both tho?
Like "日本語 (Japanese)”
So that if I fuck up my languages for some reason, I can turn back -
A split combo of the two is pretty common.
English is an official language in 53 countries, and primary language in 29. You can attempt to split it, but that wouldn't be very pleasant picture.
