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This is fromt he point of view of someone that is fluent in English. I assure you that in countries like France, Italy, Spain, etc... this is true but for a sm

This is fromt he point of view of someone that is fluent in English. I assure you that in countries like France, Italy, Spain, etc... this is true but for a small percentage of the population. It makes no business sense for a company not to localize a website or a service, if your market has a substantial number of non-English speakers. But yes, for my own convenience (unironically), I wish that every website had a base English version that you could access with a single click. For example I was looking at some Microsoft webpage with troubleshooting or API information (can't remember). By default it was shown traslated based on my location, but there was a prominent "Read this in English" switch at the top. Top marks.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
The problem is not the localization. It's choosing the default language based on anything other than explicit info provided by user-agent - that is, URL and Accept-Language, in that order.
sametmax 8y ago
French here. Yes, the english level is terrible in my country. Unfortuntly, translation is imperative if you want to enter the market. Which sucks, because it's a huge waste. There is not benefit to it: a UI is not like a book, you don't lose some quality in translation. In fact, most UI are worse once translated because english is a short and to the point language, which is what you want for buttons and menus.
Symbiote 8y ago
How many people in France have their computer / browser set to English, but don't understand English? I could see that being more common in the early 2000s, when it was probably easier to find a pirate version of Windows in English, but now...?
- reaperducer 8y ago
  I can't speak about France, but my experience in the U.S. is that recent immigrants who can't speak English still set their computers to English. For some it's because they're so used to the non-English versions of web pages being so bad or abbreviated that having an English page they can half read is often better than the truncated "good enough" version provided in their native tongue.
  - Mirioron 8y ago
    But in that case they would want to have the English version of the website anyway.
seanmcdirmid 8y ago
At least get it right. There isn’t much point in serving a German page by default in Geneva.

TeMPOraL 8y ago

The problem is not the localization. It's choosing the default language based on anything other than explicit info provided by user-agent - that is, URL and Accept-Language, in that order.

sametmax 8y ago

French here. Yes, the english level is terrible in my country. Unfortuntly, translation is imperative if you want to enter the market. Which sucks, because it's a huge waste. There is not benefit to it: a UI is not like a book, you don't lose some quality in translation. In fact, most UI are worse once translated because english is a short and to the point language, which is what you want for buttons and menus.

Symbiote 8y ago

How many people in France have their computer / browser set to English, but don't understand English? I could see that being more common in the early 2000s, when it was probably easier to find a pirate version of Windows in English, but now...?

reaperducer 8y ago
I can't speak about France, but my experience in the U.S. is that recent immigrants who can't speak English still set their computers to English. For some it's because they're so used to the non-English versions of web pages being so bad or abbreviated that having an English page they can half read is often better than the truncated "good enough" version provided in their native tongue.
- Mirioron 8y ago
  But in that case they would want to have the English version of the website anyway.

seanmcdirmid 8y ago

At least get it right. There isn’t much point in serving a German page by default in Geneva.