4 ms·

I wish Google catered to user preferences in this. I am from Spain, but often strongly prefer to search for stuff in English (for example for news, as I want t

I wish Google catered to user preferences in this. I am from Spain, but often strongly prefer to search for stuff in English (for example for news, as I want to avoid the hyperpartisan Spanish media). No matter what I do: even if I have the browser configured in English, Google configured to use English, and I go to google.co.uk instead of google.es, I type e.g. "Trump" in the search box and most of the results are in Spanish. I do get some English results, but on page 2. The world is multilingual, actually there are estimates that over 50% of the world population is at least bilingual (even if this is not the case in the US, where the proportion is about 25%). You have an awesome search engine, is it that hard to add an option to choose the language or languages in which to search (possibly changing between searches, as we actually use different languages for different stuff, e.g. I teach in Spanish but do research in English) and then showing results in those languages unbiased by language? PS: funnily enough, I see this particular page about the gnome in English.

cyborgx7 10y ago
I get the feeling that to a lot of americans, the concept of speaking more than one language is something wierd and unusual. If it happens, it's mostly because auf migration from one country to another. And if someone learns another language to a fluent level without moving to a different country it's an impressive achievement.
- mobilefriendly 10y ago
  It isn't weird, almost all Americans study a second language in high school (or earlier). But it is unusual to achieve any facility with a second language, outside of Spanish in LA or Miami.
  - scrollaway 10y ago
    No, it is different, and it applies to most of the anglosphere outside of dual-language countries like Canada. In most of the non-english-speaking western world, almost everybody studies English as a second language and a lot of people study a third language in high school.
- tangue 10y ago
  Yep I had this feeling too that we've got american standards on software. I switched to Safari when Chrome wanted to translate every page I read in English.
  - thanksgiving 10y ago
    You should be able to disable this behavior in settings by searching for translate chrome://settings/search#translate and deselecting `Offer to translate pages that aren't in a language you read`. Or maybe you tried it and it didn't work as expected?
  - remir 10y ago
    It's something Chrome does by default when you browse a site in a language that is different from your system's. My OS is set to French and Chrome ask me to translate English webpages in French.
Semaphor 10y ago
They do. 2 to 4 years back they finally after many years managed to follow user settings. You need to change your language in 3 different places (account, security and Google plus iirc) but it works for me to show everything in English even though I usually love in Germany

cyborgx7 10y ago

I get the feeling that to a lot of americans, the concept of speaking more than one language is something wierd and unusual. If it happens, it's mostly because auf migration from one country to another. And if someone learns another language to a fluent level without moving to a different country it's an impressive achievement.

mobilefriendly 10y ago
It isn't weird, almost all Americans study a second language in high school (or earlier). But it is unusual to achieve any facility with a second language, outside of Spanish in LA or Miami.
- scrollaway 10y ago
  No, it is different, and it applies to most of the anglosphere outside of dual-language countries like Canada. In most of the non-english-speaking western world, almost everybody studies English as a second language and a lot of people study a third language in high school.
tangue 10y ago
Yep I had this feeling too that we've got american standards on software. I switched to Safari when Chrome wanted to translate every page I read in English.
- thanksgiving 10y ago
  You should be able to disable this behavior in settings by searching for translate chrome://settings/search#translate and deselecting `Offer to translate pages that aren't in a language you read`. Or maybe you tried it and it didn't work as expected?
- remir 10y ago
  It's something Chrome does by default when you browse a site in a language that is different from your system's. My OS is set to French and Chrome ask me to translate English webpages in French.

Semaphor 10y ago

They do. 2 to 4 years back they finally after many years managed to follow user settings. You need to change your language in 3 different places (account, security and Google plus iirc) but it works for me to show everything in English even though I usually love in Germany