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This is an e-store page. It makes sense to follow the region instead of language preferences. The problem is they ideally should separate UI language from regi

This is an e-store page. It makes sense to follow the region instead of language preferences. The problem is they ideally should separate UI language from region settings, but most sites don't. And they may have some difficulties to do so because they could have specific products that they simply don't have info in languages other than the local one. If you just want to read the description, you can simply change the region below. If you visit https://www.apple.com/jp/shop/ https://www.apple.com/jp/shop/, it only has Japanese too. You can't use JP region store and have it in English at the same time.

scrollaway 6y ago
I live in Belgium; in an area of Belgium that primarily speaks French. I happen to speak French as well (though I'm not originally from Belgium, I am French), but given the places I've lived in my life that's more a coincidence than anything else. I do not speak flemish (be-nl). Yet, my page of the store is in flemish. My browser (a Google browser!) is configured to ask for pages in english, and as a fallback, in french at a lower priority. There is a French version of the store, and it's still not sending it. And a lot of people here in Belgium speak exclusively English. German is also an official language in the country, though only actively spoken in a small part of it. (Map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Belgium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Belgium) I have no obvious way of changing the language, other than a flag which rather points to changing the region. Turns out, in the region picker (https://store.google.com/regionpicker https://store.google.com/regionpicker), "Belgium French" is a region, separate from "Flemish". When I click "Belgium French", a warning appears. In Flemish. In other words, almost everything about language that store page can get wrong, it does get wrong.
- fireattack 6y ago
  > a warning appears. In Flemish. No, it will appear in two languages, top one being your current region/language, and bottom being your target region/language. So in your case, it should show in nl-BE and fr-BE. Here is a screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/ICwIgxH.png https://i.imgur.com/ICwIgxH.png
reaperducer 6y ago
This is a e-store page. It makes sense to follow the region instead of language preferences. Makes sense to whom? Not to someone who's been using a company's web site in one language, and then suddenly gets shifted to another language simply because they want to make a purchase from the same company they were communicating with seconds before. Imaging talking to someone at your bank's call center, and then when you get transferred suddenly speaking to someone in another language. "Well, you wanted the Fraud Protection department. It makes sense to speak {$xx__language}." Computers are supposed to work for people, not the other way around. We have grown accustomed to half-assery, using the excuse that "everyone else does it." Just today I received a package from Amazon. A simple cat food bowl. I had to put it together. I remember when it was so unusual for production burdens to be shifted to the consumer that such products were labeled "some assembly required." Now we're so used to companies not completing their work, that we make excuses for them. Enough.
- fireattack 6y ago
  There is no "sudden" change. Google as a web service (search, Gmail, etc.) can offer multiple languages for a region, but their store, as a separate business, can (so far) only offers local language for a certain region. The point I'm trying to make is that there is an issue, but the issue is not they ignore user's language setting. What it does is that 1) They detect store region based on user's region instead of language preference, which is reasonable IMHO; 2) However, they don't have English display language for their German store. This can and should be improved. For example, Amazon Japan offers Japanese, Chinese and English. Google can definitely do better since their products are much more limited and they have translations for most of content already. >Imaging talking to someone at your bank's call center, and then when you get transferred suddenly speaking to someone in another language. "Well, you wanted the Fraud Protection department. It makes sense to speak {$xx__language}." A better analogy would be you're in China. Well now everything will be in Chinese and Chinese only to begin with.
  - reaperducer 6y ago
    We'll have to disagree here. I don't think that within a company changing the user's language, effectively breaking the experience, is "reasonable." If your business units can't cooperate on something as simple as passing a language variable, then the business is broken.
marcus_holmes 6y ago
No, this is ridiculous. Being located in Germany/Japan doesn't make me suddenly able to understand German/Japanese. I can walk into a shop in Berlin and point at things until they conclude the transaction - there is nothing in German law that means I have to conduct the transaction in German. (Though because most Berliners' English is excellent, usually the entire transaction is in English). If a retail store physically located in Germany can cope with my ignorance of the local language without ever meeting me before, then Google, with it's vast knowledge of me - and my specific choice of language preference - should be able to do the same. In other words - there's absolutely no good reason why I can't use either the Google or Apple stores in the country I live in but using any language I choose. Also - switching region to one that speaks a language I understand usually means I then can't select a delivery address in the region that I live in. It's like they refuse to sell things to people who don't understand the official language of the country.

scrollaway 6y ago

I live in Belgium; in an area of Belgium that primarily speaks French. I happen to speak French as well (though I'm not originally from Belgium, I am French), but given the places I've lived in my life that's more a coincidence than anything else. I do not speak flemish (be-nl). Yet, my page of the store is in flemish. My browser (a Google browser!) is configured to ask for pages in english, and as a fallback, in french at a lower priority. There is a French version of the store, and it's still not sending it. And a lot of people here in Belgium speak exclusively English. German is also an official language in the country, though only actively spoken in a small part of it. (Map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Belgium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Belgium) I have no obvious way of changing the language, other than a flag which rather points to changing the region. Turns out, in the region picker (https://store.google.com/regionpicker https://store.google.com/regionpicker), "Belgium French" is a region, separate from "Flemish". When I click "Belgium French", a warning appears. In Flemish. In other words, almost everything about language that store page can get wrong, it does get wrong.

fireattack 6y ago
> a warning appears. In Flemish. No, it will appear in two languages, top one being your current region/language, and bottom being your target region/language. So in your case, it should show in nl-BE and fr-BE. Here is a screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/ICwIgxH.png https://i.imgur.com/ICwIgxH.png

reaperducer 6y ago

This is a e-store page. It makes sense to follow the region instead of language preferences. Makes sense to whom? Not to someone who's been using a company's web site in one language, and then suddenly gets shifted to another language simply because they want to make a purchase from the same company they were communicating with seconds before. Imaging talking to someone at your bank's call center, and then when you get transferred suddenly speaking to someone in another language. "Well, you wanted the Fraud Protection department. It makes sense to speak {$xx__language}." Computers are supposed to work for people, not the other way around. We have grown accustomed to half-assery, using the excuse that "everyone else does it." Just today I received a package from Amazon. A simple cat food bowl. I had to put it together. I remember when it was so unusual for production burdens to be shifted to the consumer that such products were labeled "some assembly required." Now we're so used to companies not completing their work, that we make excuses for them. Enough.

fireattack 6y ago
There is no "sudden" change. Google as a web service (search, Gmail, etc.) can offer multiple languages for a region, but their store, as a separate business, can (so far) only offers local language for a certain region. The point I'm trying to make is that there is an issue, but the issue is not they ignore user's language setting. What it does is that 1) They detect store region based on user's region instead of language preference, which is reasonable IMHO; 2) However, they don't have English display language for their German store. This can and should be improved. For example, Amazon Japan offers Japanese, Chinese and English. Google can definitely do better since their products are much more limited and they have translations for most of content already. >Imaging talking to someone at your bank's call center, and then when you get transferred suddenly speaking to someone in another language. "Well, you wanted the Fraud Protection department. It makes sense to speak {$xx__language}." A better analogy would be you're in China. Well now everything will be in Chinese and Chinese only to begin with.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  We'll have to disagree here. I don't think that within a company changing the user's language, effectively breaking the experience, is "reasonable." If your business units can't cooperate on something as simple as passing a language variable, then the business is broken.

marcus_holmes 6y ago

No, this is ridiculous. Being located in Germany/Japan doesn't make me suddenly able to understand German/Japanese. I can walk into a shop in Berlin and point at things until they conclude the transaction - there is nothing in German law that means I have to conduct the transaction in German. (Though because most Berliners' English is excellent, usually the entire transaction is in English). If a retail store physically located in Germany can cope with my ignorance of the local language without ever meeting me before, then Google, with it's vast knowledge of me - and my specific choice of language preference - should be able to do the same. In other words - there's absolutely no good reason why I can't use either the Google or Apple stores in the country I live in but using any language I choose. Also - switching region to one that speaks a language I understand usually means I then can't select a delivery address in the region that I live in. It's like they refuse to sell things to people who don't understand the official language of the country.