4 ms·

My vote goes to the “Org Too Big, Nobody Cares” explanation. Or, perhaps, just the blissful America-centric ignorance about how there are regions in the world

My vote goes to the “Org Too Big, Nobody Cares” explanation. Or, perhaps, just the blissful America-centric ignorance about how there are regions in the world with multiple official languages. Haven't checked this recently, but a while ago Google Maps was still serving street names in a random language (the first name in alphabetical ordering), for streets which have names in multiple languages.

sebastien_b 5y ago
>Or, perhaps, just the blissful America-centric ignorance Ignorance, or arrogance?
- indymike 5y ago
  American who has been in that meeting a few times. It is mostly arrogant innocence... A kind of Dunning-Krueger like effect.
Jaruzel 5y ago
> Or, perhaps just the blissful America-centric ignorance about how there are regions in the world where there are multiple official languages As a brit, I am always irked that most of what I browse is locked to US English, as if it's the same thing as British English. At least if your main language is a popular non-English language you get the option to switch to it. This is compounded by those location drop-downs, Where United States is always in the special top slot, and below that is everywhere else on the planet, like second rate-citizens. It's especially egregious on global sites, that serve global content.
- jsjohnst 5y ago
  > This is compounded by those location drop-downs, Where United States is always in the special top slot This used to be the case, but it seems to be becoming rare. It’s really annoying actually as alphabetically United States is way down in the list. This is how IP geolocation should be used imho, bubble up the probable location(s) to the top of the list, but DON’T assume the geo is right without asking.
  - zarzavat 5y ago
    While we are complaining about this, can we all agree that using plain <select> for country is an anti pattern. There should be a fuzzy search. So many times I have to search for my country under United Kingdom UK Britain Great Britain England Only to find that it was “Great Britain” but collated in the B’s amongst Bhutan and Belgium, etc.
    - logifail 5y ago
      > So many times I have to search for my country under [...] It's even better when you have to explain this specific oddity in a foreign language. Try politely explaining to a German consular official that they probably need to look in their system's drop-down box under 'V' for 'Vereinigtes* Königreich' [UK] (instead of 'E' for 'England' or indeed 'G' for 'Großbritannien' [GB]) as they are attempting to enter passport details... * 'United', in German...
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- M2Ys4U 5y ago
  We once added internationalisation to our app. Being British developers, our English was British English so that's what was in the language picker. We had a very angry American (presumably) who accused us of "cultural imperialism" for having an en-GB option but no en-US option. Got to say I was laughing about that for quite some time.
makeitdouble 5y ago
Youtube also auto-translates video title for me, based on the language it assumes I can read. It’s so infuriating (there’s settings that alleviate that behavior for declared languages, but it’s buggy as hell, and still grating…)
tommypalm 5y ago
I listened to a Podcast and one of the hosts was a British guy living in America. He had to speak in an American accent to his Xbox One in order for it to understand him. It seemed the voice recognition was based on your location setting and not independently configurable.
thow-58d4e8b 5y ago
This triggers some PTSD with Google Maps navigation in Finland We have two official languages - Finnish and Swedish, neither of them big enough to warrant any Google effort for proper text-to-speech. Hence, the voice navigation first pronounces street names in Finnish, then again in Swedish, both butchered by applying English spelling rules, all voiced by an extremely robotic voice
kevincox 5y ago
I doubt it. I bet this actually works better for most people. It really sucks because you can't fix it if your computer is actually configured correct, but they probably ran some simple tests and determined that IP location is better than HTTP header language. I'm sure it is easy to construct an argument that this isn't actually better overall. That case probably does then fall into "Org Too Big, Nobody Cares".
marcosdumay 5y ago
Monopolists don't care about quality. It's slightly different from too big an organization. Big organizations do not care about the people they touch (employees, suppliers, etc). Monopolists do not care about their customers.
pbhjpbhj 5y ago
USA-centrism per se would still seem to recognise second languages, several state legislatures use Spanish, I think at least one publishes laws in Spanish & English. Part of USA even has Spanish as an official and principal language - Puerto Rico.

sebastien_b 5y ago

>Or, perhaps, just the blissful America-centric ignorance Ignorance, or arrogance?

indymike 5y ago
American who has been in that meeting a few times. It is mostly arrogant innocence... A kind of Dunning-Krueger like effect.

Jaruzel 5y ago

> Or, perhaps just the blissful America-centric ignorance about how there are regions in the world where there are multiple official languages As a brit, I am always irked that most of what I browse is locked to US English, as if it's the same thing as British English. At least if your main language is a popular non-English language you get the option to switch to it. This is compounded by those location drop-downs, Where United States is always in the special top slot, and below that is everywhere else on the planet, like second rate-citizens. It's especially egregious on global sites, that serve global content.

jsjohnst 5y ago
> This is compounded by those location drop-downs, Where United States is always in the special top slot This used to be the case, but it seems to be becoming rare. It’s really annoying actually as alphabetically United States is way down in the list. This is how IP geolocation should be used imho, bubble up the probable location(s) to the top of the list, but DON’T assume the geo is right without asking.
- zarzavat 5y ago
  While we are complaining about this, can we all agree that using plain <select> for country is an anti pattern. There should be a fuzzy search. So many times I have to search for my country under United Kingdom UK Britain Great Britain England Only to find that it was “Great Britain” but collated in the B’s amongst Bhutan and Belgium, etc.
  - logifail 5y ago
    > So many times I have to search for my country under [...] It's even better when you have to explain this specific oddity in a foreign language. Try politely explaining to a German consular official that they probably need to look in their system's drop-down box under 'V' for 'Vereinigtes* Königreich' [UK] (instead of 'E' for 'England' or indeed 'G' for 'Großbritannien' [GB]) as they are attempting to enter passport details... * 'United', in German...
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
M2Ys4U 5y ago
We once added internationalisation to our app. Being British developers, our English was British English so that's what was in the language picker. We had a very angry American (presumably) who accused us of "cultural imperialism" for having an en-GB option but no en-US option. Got to say I was laughing about that for quite some time.

makeitdouble 5y ago

Youtube also auto-translates video title for me, based on the language it assumes I can read. It’s so infuriating (there’s settings that alleviate that behavior for declared languages, but it’s buggy as hell, and still grating…)

tommypalm 5y ago

I listened to a Podcast and one of the hosts was a British guy living in America. He had to speak in an American accent to his Xbox One in order for it to understand him. It seemed the voice recognition was based on your location setting and not independently configurable.

thow-58d4e8b 5y ago

This triggers some PTSD with Google Maps navigation in Finland We have two official languages - Finnish and Swedish, neither of them big enough to warrant any Google effort for proper text-to-speech. Hence, the voice navigation first pronounces street names in Finnish, then again in Swedish, both butchered by applying English spelling rules, all voiced by an extremely robotic voice

kevincox 5y ago

I doubt it. I bet this actually works better for most people. It really sucks because you can't fix it if your computer is actually configured correct, but they probably ran some simple tests and determined that IP location is better than HTTP header language. I'm sure it is easy to construct an argument that this isn't actually better overall. That case probably does then fall into "Org Too Big, Nobody Cares".

marcosdumay 5y ago

Monopolists don't care about quality. It's slightly different from too big an organization. Big organizations do not care about the people they touch (employees, suppliers, etc). Monopolists do not care about their customers.

pbhjpbhj 5y ago

USA-centrism per se would still seem to recognise second languages, several state legislatures use Spanish, I think at least one publishes laws in Spanish & English. Part of USA even has Spanish as an official and principal language - Puerto Rico.