4 ms·

Oh yes, this is such a nuisance! * When you download Firefox from Norway, you get the Norwegian version, with the right Accept-Language header setting by defau

Oh yes, this is such a nuisance! * When you download Firefox from Norway, you get the Norwegian version, with the right Accept-Language header setting by default. * When you buy a computer with Windows or MacOS in Norway, it's localised to Norwegian – IE/Edge/Safari presumably sets the right Accept-Language header. Linux users get to choose language during install. * Looking at Piwik stats from a site mostly used by people in Norway, I see mostly "Norwegian Bokmål" as Browser Language (10x as much as English). Dominant browsers are 1. Chrome 2. Safari 3. Firefox 4. IE. So the browsers seem to be doing the right thing. So even without fancy UI asking what languages you know, Accept-Language seems to be correctly set (at least for Norwegians). So why are sites using the more complicated and less precise geoip guess?

shouldbworking 10y ago
I worked at a place that used neither the header or geo-ip. Multi language capability was a check box for a client and they never specified how it needed to work, so it was implemented in the most haskish way possible. The app was not localizable, it was using an obsolete platform and third party widget library. So.... We made a handler that piped the HTML output to a parser which attempted to identify the visible text on the page and translated it using a dictionary. The only way to choose a language was a small drop down on the top of the page that was always in English, and since it was implemented so badly usually you had to leave and return to the site for the translator to start working(caching issues).
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Manishearth 10y ago
And when you download Firefox from Maharashtra (a state in India), you do not get the Marathi version. It is non trivial to enable Marathi (you need to download a language pack addon, folks who need this may not be technically sound enough or speak enough English to figure this out). Marathi is the 19th most spoken language in the world, with more than 14 times as many speakers as Norwegian. What I say for Firefox was true for all browsers last I checked. So "at least for Norwegians" is correct; this doesn't generalize well at all. To be fair, Google in India defaults to English anyway (it's complicated -- might have been a sensible choice in the past since you could assume that folks who use the net know English, but it is probably exclusionary now that everyone is coming online). But I'm sure what I said for Marathi works for many other languages.
- avip 10y ago
  How many in Maharashtra actually speak Marathi? This is a problematic comparison.
  - Manishearth 10y ago
    Pretty much everyone not in Mumbai. Folks in the Konkani regions usually speak it as a secondary language. Mumbai is a complicated case to deal with.
- unhammer 10y ago
  Thanks for enlightening me :) Even so, it seems like a bug that you aren't offered the Marathi version (or a choice between that and English) when you download Firefox from a Maharashtra IP. Maybe something to report to Firefox bugzilla? Btw, do you need to download additional language packs to get Windows or MacOS localised to Marathi when you buy a new computer there? And what do you think of the UI-solution suggested in the blog post? ----- Crazy alternative: Browsers typically include language detection libraries, used for detecting LTR/RTL status and spelling[1]. The default setting for Accept-Language could be based on the languages detected when the user types into spell checked text fields. [1] Firefox doesn't do this for spelling yet, but I think Safari at least does https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1203024 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1203024
  - Manishearth 10y ago
    I think it's because the Marathi localization isn't an official one. I've been discussing how to improve this. IMO the blog post proposes a rather naive UI that will be too involved and confusing for this task. For advanced users, maybe, but then you want to actually define the "pretty good" etc. A drag-and-drop-choose-preference-order is better here, though still involved.

shouldbworking 10y ago

I worked at a place that used neither the header or geo-ip. Multi language capability was a check box for a client and they never specified how it needed to work, so it was implemented in the most haskish way possible. The app was not localizable, it was using an obsolete platform and third party widget library. So.... We made a handler that piped the HTML output to a parser which attempted to identify the visible text on the page and translated it using a dictionary. The only way to choose a language was a small drop down on the top of the page that was always in English, and since it was implemented so badly usually you had to leave and return to the site for the translator to start working(caching issues).

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Manishearth 10y ago

And when you download Firefox from Maharashtra (a state in India), you do not get the Marathi version. It is non trivial to enable Marathi (you need to download a language pack addon, folks who need this may not be technically sound enough or speak enough English to figure this out). Marathi is the 19th most spoken language in the world, with more than 14 times as many speakers as Norwegian. What I say for Firefox was true for all browsers last I checked. So "at least for Norwegians" is correct; this doesn't generalize well at all. To be fair, Google in India defaults to English anyway (it's complicated -- might have been a sensible choice in the past since you could assume that folks who use the net know English, but it is probably exclusionary now that everyone is coming online). But I'm sure what I said for Marathi works for many other languages.

avip 10y ago
How many in Maharashtra actually speak Marathi? This is a problematic comparison.
- Manishearth 10y ago
  Pretty much everyone not in Mumbai. Folks in the Konkani regions usually speak it as a secondary language. Mumbai is a complicated case to deal with.
unhammer 10y ago
Thanks for enlightening me :) Even so, it seems like a bug that you aren't offered the Marathi version (or a choice between that and English) when you download Firefox from a Maharashtra IP. Maybe something to report to Firefox bugzilla? Btw, do you need to download additional language packs to get Windows or MacOS localised to Marathi when you buy a new computer there? And what do you think of the UI-solution suggested in the blog post? ----- Crazy alternative: Browsers typically include language detection libraries, used for detecting LTR/RTL status and spelling[1]. The default setting for Accept-Language could be based on the languages detected when the user types into spell checked text fields. [1] Firefox doesn't do this for spelling yet, but I think Safari at least does https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1203024 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1203024
- Manishearth 10y ago
  I think it's because the Marathi localization isn't an official one. I've been discussing how to improve this. IMO the blog post proposes a rather naive UI that will be too involved and confusing for this task. For advanced users, maybe, but then you want to actually define the "pretty good" etc. A drag-and-drop-choose-preference-order is better here, though still involved.