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It is a bit more complicated but I can get if people whose first language is English and who are rarely exposed to other languages cannot understand the struggl

by anc84 9y ago

It is a bit more complicated but I can get if people whose first language is English and who are rarely exposed to other languages cannot understand the struggle. If I prefer to read English texts in their original form (because I understand it perfectly clear) but read texts in my native language in that original language, there is no single setting. It feels weird saying this, but it reeks of a very anglo-american worldview to have a single language preference.

majewsky 9y ago
It's even worse than that. My primary criterion for whether I want English or German is not the language itself, but my expectation of the content being well-maintained. Translated versions are usually lagging behind a bit. On the Arch Linux wiki, I'll always use the English version. On my (German) university's website, I'd rather want the German version.
sangnoir 9y ago
I think gp was being descriptive and not prescriptive - one preferred language is how the web works today (and I speak as a someone who is multilingual). > It feels weird saying this, but it reeks of a very anglo-american worldview to have a single language preference. This is a the browser-side problem[1], so perhaps the browsers authors have an anglo-american worldview? You could file a bug/feature request with your favourite open-source browser. Alternatively, an extension that selectively sends per-website "Accept-Language" headers would work - I haven't checked if one exists but it can be written in a weekend (not sure if Firefox new extension framework will allows messing with the headers). 1. Some sites work around this by allowing you to have a choose a language that overrides the one requested by the browser and persist this in a cookie or your profile. Defaulting to the language requested by the browser is a sane default compared the other alternatives (like Geo-IP look-ups: "Oh, I see you are visiting Germany. I will assume your browser requested English in error and will serve you the German version of the article instead")
- rlpb 9y ago
  > This is a the browser-side problem... No, it sounds like a protocol problem to me. How do I state in an HTTP request: "I speak English and German; if you can serve both and the article was written in one and translated to the other, then give me the original please". That was a long sentence, but it wouldn't have been particularly hard to define well and put into the protocol when it was originally drafted. It's a bit late now, obviously. For example, one could define provenance of a translation much like NTP defines strata. Accept-Language could then have taken this into account.
  - sangnoir 9y ago
    > No, it sounds like a protocol problem to me. How do I state in an HTTP request: "I speak English and German; if you can serve both and the article was written in one and translated to the other, then give me the original please". That is a problem with the quality of the translation/translators - not the protocol. The protocol is neutral on languages and considers all versions as equivalent, it only expects that you would pick one. The specific behaviour you are expecting can be trivially built into the server side without modifying the current protocol.

by anc84 9y ago

majewsky 9y ago

It's even worse than that. My primary criterion for whether I want English or German is not the language itself, but my expectation of the content being well-maintained. Translated versions are usually lagging behind a bit. On the Arch Linux wiki, I'll always use the English version. On my (German) university's website, I'd rather want the German version.

sangnoir 9y ago

I think gp was being descriptive and not prescriptive - one preferred language is how the web works today (and I speak as a someone who is multilingual). > It feels weird saying this, but it reeks of a very anglo-american worldview to have a single language preference. This is a the browser-side problem[1], so perhaps the browsers authors have an anglo-american worldview? You could file a bug/feature request with your favourite open-source browser. Alternatively, an extension that selectively sends per-website "Accept-Language" headers would work - I haven't checked if one exists but it can be written in a weekend (not sure if Firefox new extension framework will allows messing with the headers). 1. Some sites work around this by allowing you to have a choose a language that overrides the one requested by the browser and persist this in a cookie or your profile. Defaulting to the language requested by the browser is a sane default compared the other alternatives (like Geo-IP look-ups: "Oh, I see you are visiting Germany. I will assume your browser requested English in error and will serve you the German version of the article instead")

rlpb 9y ago
> This is a the browser-side problem... No, it sounds like a protocol problem to me. How do I state in an HTTP request: "I speak English and German; if you can serve both and the article was written in one and translated to the other, then give me the original please". That was a long sentence, but it wouldn't have been particularly hard to define well and put into the protocol when it was originally drafted. It's a bit late now, obviously. For example, one could define provenance of a translation much like NTP defines strata. Accept-Language could then have taken this into account.
- sangnoir 9y ago
  > No, it sounds like a protocol problem to me. How do I state in an HTTP request: "I speak English and German; if you can serve both and the article was written in one and translated to the other, then give me the original please". That is a problem with the quality of the translation/translators - not the protocol. The protocol is neutral on languages and considers all versions as equivalent, it only expects that you would pick one. The specific behaviour you are expecting can be trivially built into the server side without modifying the current protocol.