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I use a VPN for all traffic, using an exit server in Finland. I don't speak a word of finnish. I have chatted with people who work on internationalization abou

I use a VPN for all traffic, using an exit server in Finland. I don't speak a word of finnish. I have chatted with people who work on internationalization about IP based detection. The explanation I've always heard is that `Accept-Language` is all but useless. For a significant number of users the value is, incorrectly, `en-US`. Because of how unreliable `Accept-Language` is, IP based detection is unfortuantely has a much lower false positive rate.

thaumasiotes 8y ago
In general, I expect a web site, if it's available in more than one language, to offer me a menu where I pick the language I want. It's easy to do and it works for everyone. Usually the languages will also be accompanied by a little flag for extra non-ambiguity. See the "Change region" menu at the top of https://www.nintendo.com https://www.nintendo.com, or the obvious "English" selector amidst the gibberish at the top of https://www.ikea.com/jp/ja/ https://www.ikea.com/jp/ja/ . Given how easy and robust this is... what exactly is the problem with using Accept-Language as your first guess? Maybe if more sites honored Accept-Language, users would start setting it.
- K0nserv 8y ago
  You still have to pick a default region/language unless you want to force the user to make a selection before they get anywhere which is a mess UX-wise
  - Technetium_Hat 8y ago
    Ikea still uses such a landing page if you go directly to ikea.com .
pinum 8y ago
If it's specifically that value that's a problem then I'd suggest the following heuristic: Use geolocation if `Accept-Language` is `en-US`, otherwise respect the header. Technical users in Switzerland/Japan/wherever who want to see English pages can set their header to "en-GB" or "en-AU" to avoid getting caught in the heuristic. Edit: I'm sure it's much more complicated than that, of course- l10n isn't my job and I don't want to be this guy https://xkcd.com/1831/ https://xkcd.com/1831/
TeMPOraL 8y ago
Incorrectly... or not? I have my Accept-Language set explicitly to en-US, on purpose, in the small hope I stop getting localized results. I don't care about Polish Internet, I want results from the whole Internet.
bhaak 8y ago
But how can the Accept-Language header be useless? I suppose almost nobody sets this header by hand and it is derived from whatever environment your browser is in. I mean if my Windows or my phone/tablet is set to German, showing me a German UI, wouldn't then the browser use that setting for Accept-Language? I can't understand how this would produce unreliable results unless there were some serious bugs in browser support (hopefully in the past).

thaumasiotes 8y ago

In general, I expect a web site, if it's available in more than one language, to offer me a menu where I pick the language I want. It's easy to do and it works for everyone. Usually the languages will also be accompanied by a little flag for extra non-ambiguity. See the "Change region" menu at the top of https://www.nintendo.com https://www.nintendo.com, or the obvious "English" selector amidst the gibberish at the top of https://www.ikea.com/jp/ja/ https://www.ikea.com/jp/ja/ . Given how easy and robust this is... what exactly is the problem with using Accept-Language as your first guess? Maybe if more sites honored Accept-Language, users would start setting it.

K0nserv 8y ago
You still have to pick a default region/language unless you want to force the user to make a selection before they get anywhere which is a mess UX-wise
- Technetium_Hat 8y ago
  Ikea still uses such a landing page if you go directly to ikea.com .

pinum 8y ago

If it's specifically that value that's a problem then I'd suggest the following heuristic: Use geolocation if `Accept-Language` is `en-US`, otherwise respect the header. Technical users in Switzerland/Japan/wherever who want to see English pages can set their header to "en-GB" or "en-AU" to avoid getting caught in the heuristic. Edit: I'm sure it's much more complicated than that, of course- l10n isn't my job and I don't want to be this guy https://xkcd.com/1831/ https://xkcd.com/1831/

TeMPOraL 8y ago

Incorrectly... or not? I have my Accept-Language set explicitly to en-US, on purpose, in the small hope I stop getting localized results. I don't care about Polish Internet, I want results from the whole Internet.

bhaak 8y ago

But how can the Accept-Language header be useless? I suppose almost nobody sets this header by hand and it is derived from whatever environment your browser is in. I mean if my Windows or my phone/tablet is set to German, showing me a German UI, wouldn't then the browser use that setting for Accept-Language? I can't understand how this would produce unreliable results unless there were some serious bugs in browser support (hopefully in the past).