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Better explanation: monolingual people thinks that computers will always be configured to the local language and any other setup is a "misconfiguration". In re

Better explanation: monolingual people thinks that computers will always be configured to the local language and any other setup is a "misconfiguration". In real life a large number of corporations (and developers) have their computers configured with English as this is the main language of the coorporation and makes IT-support much easier. (we don't even need to talk about how badly botched many language translations are). These users will still want Google to return results in their native language. There is a much much larger number of users like this than travellers from USA. One thing that bothers me a lot with US websites is that they always assume English language means 12-hour clock. Apple has learned the above over time: it is much easier today to get a Mac running with English and 24-hour clocks.

quitit 5y ago
Unfortunately the problem exists in both directions. I run my setup entirely in English and Google will still try to squeeze in the local non-english language. Confusingly Google will also write some sentences half in english and half in the local language. E.g. "Google is also available in: <insert foreign language here>" (rather than the full sentence being in the foreign language. It's the kind of attention to detail that I've become accustomed to from them
- jobigoud 5y ago
  > E.g. "Google is also available in: <insert foreign language here>" This specific one might be on purpose to avoid translating language names. If you land in page entirely in Chinese but you see the word "English" in Latin characters under a link, you can click it to escape. But if it's itself in Chinese you'll never find it. I do the same in applications, have a menu for languages but don't translate language names, if you change language by mistake you can always find your way back.
  - verve_rat 5y ago
    The whole sentence "This page in English" or "This page in Mandarin" should be in English or Mandrin respectively. Compare "Rirgwyd rkrgru dlwhgi ro English" to "This page in English". Which is better for people that only read English?
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      They're pretty close. And when a page is in the correct language, I would prefer not to have entire sentences in a different language.
      - verve_rat 5y ago
        If needs be put a "Language Settings" header above it or something, but if you can read the rest of the page then those sentences are not for you!
        Dylan16807 5y ago
        If you have an area like that, I feel like you don't need full sentences at all.
  - quitit 5y ago
    While I used this example, which one could explain as intentional for various reasons. There are myriad other examples where there are dual languages being interwoven across google properties. Including minutia in one language, but the body content in another. Facebook/Meta's properties are the worst for this however and will intermingle languages frequently despite being an account-based service (literally ignoring the user's preferences in favour of IP-based guess work.) Back to Google - Algorithmically there are likely straightforward reasons for why this is happening. Clearly the contents of the pages are composed from a mixture of sources, for reasons unknown these sources may not be able to detect or receive the localisation settings of the end user. Recent changes to privacy protections and cookie limitations may also be a contributor to these issues. Including the obvious: getting ads in the wrong language.
silvestrov 5y ago
The problem with monolingual is the thought that there is One True Language. It isn't so. I write half my emails in one email, the other half in another. Often emails will have sections in one language (e.g. quote from another email) and other sections in a different language. Spelling tools must be able to detect language automatically to be of any value and be able to handle multiple languages within a single sentence!
- mcv 5y ago
  I've managed to set my phone to accept and suggest both in English and Dutch. Works reasonably well.
- Semaphor 5y ago
  I use LanguageTool [0] as an extension, it never has issues detecting if I’m currently writing in English or German. I sadly have yet to find a solution that works as well on my Android. [0]: https://languagetool.org/ https://languagetool.org/
mcv 5y ago
> These users will still want Google to return results in their native language. Says who? This is a baseless assumption. Just listen to the settings that specify what language the user wants. That's what it's for. And the browser should ask the OS or the user for their language preference. And if IT-support wants one language for the interface in order to facilitate support, they can still set the other language for browser preference. Just ignoring all settings and making blind assumptions will guarantee you will be wrong many times.
- littlecranky67 5y ago
  > Says who? The browser setting that every browser sends to any server it requests data from. Usually this defaults to the system language, but you can add more languages with a priority. Mine is English (prio 1), German (prio 2), yet I for some reason get tons of spanish content as I am going back and fourth between countries these days just based on Geolocation.
  - lostcolony 5y ago
    I think you're indirectly agreeing with the parent (and great-grandparent); both are saying "Google (and others) shouldn't just use the IP; use the browser's language setting, and if that hasn't been set, the OS setting", which you also seem to be agreeing with. The only one differing is the grandparent, which was asserting first that users might think showing anything other than the local language is an error, and then asserting that users want their native language, and so I'm not really certain what they're asserting since those two are not always the same (maybe that the first is the reason Google does it, the second is asserting the preferred behavior, which is nearly agreement, in that the latter is doable via OS or browser preferences).
- wutbrodo 5y ago
  Google has literally billions of users. There are people who are worse at using computers than anyone you've ever met. I'm as irritated as anyone when something doesn't cater to "power users". But if we're trying to understand the reason behind the decision instead of just venting, then it's instructive to consider just how computer-illiterate the non-power-user is for a product as massive as Google Search, and how annoying characteristics may be a consequence of trying to satisfy both you and them.
mkishi 5y ago
That's okay, but when I go out of my way to actively set the language in a service's settings, shouldn't that be honored over an assumed local-by-default? Because that's what I do with Google (individually on Search and YouTube), and it somehow forgets it quite frequently.
Symbiote 5y ago
"The local language" is already a problem. There are countries where there are multiple local/national languages! What does Google's homepage look like in Belgium? > Mac running with English and 24-hour clocks The UK locale (probably Ireland too) has provided a 24 hour clock in Windows for decades. Although thinking about it, little-endian dates (11 March, 11/03/2022) would probably annoy Americans as much as mixed-endian dates annoy me.
- scrollaway 5y ago
  Am in Belgium. Google keeps serving me pages in Dutch. I don’t speak Dutch nor do the majority of people in my city / area. I speak French. And I don’t want results in French, I want results in English. Google thinks they known better - they do not.
  - Foobar8568 5y ago
    It's not just Google, all of them, Switzerland /German by default including the information to switch language every where
  - kolinko 5y ago
    If you're logged into a Google account, you can change the language in settings. (I'm in Poland, and I force Google to be in english this way)
    - thih9 5y ago
      The original article mentions that, as well as some shortcomings of this method.
  - laurent92 5y ago
    The trick is results in French are extremely bad quality, tech articles are dumbed down, tutorials in French lose nuance, and, well, good luck finding Hacker News in French. It was a revolution for me when I gained access to the English web, it’s the origin of the documents! I want results in English because the quality is higher in English!
vezycash 5y ago
> "The local language" is already a problem. There are countries where there are multiple local/national languages! I have this issue with Microsoft. The national language in my country is English. However, Microsoft's store defaults to a local language that I don't speak every single time. My IP is also not from a part of the country that speaks that language either.
liotier 5y ago
French native speaker here. UX consistency, shared Internet culture, habits from the early 90's and error messages I can actually find on the Web are the reasons why I always set my computing to the english language. I'm trying to have English language but metric units, 24 hour clock and ISO dates... Seldom can I achieve that. On the French-language mandatory corporate Windows laptop, Excel formulas are translated in French - so when searching for recipes on the web I have to translate them ! I enjoy sites such as Thomann.de which have separate settings for language, country and units of measurement.
- toolslive 5y ago
  Tip:Pretend to be Irish. You get English, but you also get SI and euro.
  - geoduck14 5y ago
    > Tip:Pretend to be Irish Best tip I've seen all day!
- SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago
  I just have a custom locale for any UNIX-like systems I use. American English, UTF-8, 24-hour time, RFC-3339 dates, SI units, '.' decimal point, '_' thousands separator. I call it en_ENG, for the fictional land of Engineeristan.
  - tut-urut-utut 5y ago
    Mind to share your LC_ settings?
    - SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago
      An explanation of all the valid fields can be found at [1]. Copy an existing locale, modify it to suit your needs. Don't forget to escape all characters as Unicode if you want it to support unicode. Compile & install as normal with localedef, add to `/var/lib/locales/supported.d`, run locale-gen, set the various `LC_` variables you want to use in `~/.profile` or `/etc/envionment` or whatever. This[2] askubuntu answer goes into more detail. [1] https://lh.2xlibre.net/locale/en_US/ https://lh.2xlibre.net/locale/en_US/ [2] https://askubuntu.com/a/162714 https://askubuntu.com/a/162714
onion2k 5y ago
These users will still want Google to return results in their native language. There are several layers available to Google though - - They could use the system language setting - They could use the browser's language setting - They could use the user's Google account setting if the user is logged in Corporations could set the system language, or the browser language, and it could still be overridden by the user in their Google account if they wanted to do that. Instead though, Google chooses to geolocate the user's IP address and use that which works for no one.
giancarlostoro 5y ago
…but chances are you are logged into Gmail which should know better… its just embarrassing honestly.
areoform 5y ago
They should give people the option at the top, and repeat it as necessary. They shouldn't just assume. That's the most annoying thing. When I travel, I still want to see stuff in imperial units, and Google just switches to Metric and stays stuck that way.
quantum_magpie 5y ago
But they already have a solution for this. They have a domain with the local country TLD for people who want that language. Why do they keep fucking with people accessing the english domain?
abeppu 5y ago
But Google is a bit unusual in that they both produce a very popular browser and very popular sites. Even if we suppose they know it's the case internally that many people have their browsers set to English but nevertheless want results in their local language ... they're also the ones producing a browser which allows one to set the preferred language which they then disregard.

quitit 5y ago

Unfortunately the problem exists in both directions. I run my setup entirely in English and Google will still try to squeeze in the local non-english language. Confusingly Google will also write some sentences half in english and half in the local language. E.g. "Google is also available in: <insert foreign language here>" (rather than the full sentence being in the foreign language. It's the kind of attention to detail that I've become accustomed to from them

jobigoud 5y ago
> E.g. "Google is also available in: <insert foreign language here>" This specific one might be on purpose to avoid translating language names. If you land in page entirely in Chinese but you see the word "English" in Latin characters under a link, you can click it to escape. But if it's itself in Chinese you'll never find it. I do the same in applications, have a menu for languages but don't translate language names, if you change language by mistake you can always find your way back.
- verve_rat 5y ago
  The whole sentence "This page in English" or "This page in Mandarin" should be in English or Mandrin respectively. Compare "Rirgwyd rkrgru dlwhgi ro English" to "This page in English". Which is better for people that only read English?
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    They're pretty close. And when a page is in the correct language, I would prefer not to have entire sentences in a different language.
    - verve_rat 5y ago
      If needs be put a "Language Settings" header above it or something, but if you can read the rest of the page then those sentences are not for you!
      - Dylan16807 5y ago
        If you have an area like that, I feel like you don't need full sentences at all.
- quitit 5y ago
  While I used this example, which one could explain as intentional for various reasons. There are myriad other examples where there are dual languages being interwoven across google properties. Including minutia in one language, but the body content in another. Facebook/Meta's properties are the worst for this however and will intermingle languages frequently despite being an account-based service (literally ignoring the user's preferences in favour of IP-based guess work.) Back to Google - Algorithmically there are likely straightforward reasons for why this is happening. Clearly the contents of the pages are composed from a mixture of sources, for reasons unknown these sources may not be able to detect or receive the localisation settings of the end user. Recent changes to privacy protections and cookie limitations may also be a contributor to these issues. Including the obvious: getting ads in the wrong language.

silvestrov 5y ago

The problem with monolingual is the thought that there is One True Language. It isn't so. I write half my emails in one email, the other half in another. Often emails will have sections in one language (e.g. quote from another email) and other sections in a different language. Spelling tools must be able to detect language automatically to be of any value and be able to handle multiple languages within a single sentence!

mcv 5y ago
I've managed to set my phone to accept and suggest both in English and Dutch. Works reasonably well.
Semaphor 5y ago
I use LanguageTool [0] as an extension, it never has issues detecting if I’m currently writing in English or German. I sadly have yet to find a solution that works as well on my Android. [0]: https://languagetool.org/ https://languagetool.org/

mcv 5y ago

> These users will still want Google to return results in their native language. Says who? This is a baseless assumption. Just listen to the settings that specify what language the user wants. That's what it's for. And the browser should ask the OS or the user for their language preference. And if IT-support wants one language for the interface in order to facilitate support, they can still set the other language for browser preference. Just ignoring all settings and making blind assumptions will guarantee you will be wrong many times.

littlecranky67 5y ago
> Says who? The browser setting that every browser sends to any server it requests data from. Usually this defaults to the system language, but you can add more languages with a priority. Mine is English (prio 1), German (prio 2), yet I for some reason get tons of spanish content as I am going back and fourth between countries these days just based on Geolocation.
- lostcolony 5y ago
  I think you're indirectly agreeing with the parent (and great-grandparent); both are saying "Google (and others) shouldn't just use the IP; use the browser's language setting, and if that hasn't been set, the OS setting", which you also seem to be agreeing with. The only one differing is the grandparent, which was asserting first that users might think showing anything other than the local language is an error, and then asserting that users want their native language, and so I'm not really certain what they're asserting since those two are not always the same (maybe that the first is the reason Google does it, the second is asserting the preferred behavior, which is nearly agreement, in that the latter is doable via OS or browser preferences).
wutbrodo 5y ago
Google has literally billions of users. There are people who are worse at using computers than anyone you've ever met. I'm as irritated as anyone when something doesn't cater to "power users". But if we're trying to understand the reason behind the decision instead of just venting, then it's instructive to consider just how computer-illiterate the non-power-user is for a product as massive as Google Search, and how annoying characteristics may be a consequence of trying to satisfy both you and them.

mkishi 5y ago

That's okay, but when I go out of my way to actively set the language in a service's settings, shouldn't that be honored over an assumed local-by-default? Because that's what I do with Google (individually on Search and YouTube), and it somehow forgets it quite frequently.

Symbiote 5y ago

"The local language" is already a problem. There are countries where there are multiple local/national languages! What does Google's homepage look like in Belgium? > Mac running with English and 24-hour clocks The UK locale (probably Ireland too) has provided a 24 hour clock in Windows for decades. Although thinking about it, little-endian dates (11 March, 11/03/2022) would probably annoy Americans as much as mixed-endian dates annoy me.

scrollaway 5y ago
Am in Belgium. Google keeps serving me pages in Dutch. I don’t speak Dutch nor do the majority of people in my city / area. I speak French. And I don’t want results in French, I want results in English. Google thinks they known better - they do not.
- Foobar8568 5y ago
  It's not just Google, all of them, Switzerland /German by default including the information to switch language every where
- kolinko 5y ago
  If you're logged into a Google account, you can change the language in settings. (I'm in Poland, and I force Google to be in english this way)
  - thih9 5y ago
    The original article mentions that, as well as some shortcomings of this method.
- laurent92 5y ago
  The trick is results in French are extremely bad quality, tech articles are dumbed down, tutorials in French lose nuance, and, well, good luck finding Hacker News in French. It was a revolution for me when I gained access to the English web, it’s the origin of the documents! I want results in English because the quality is higher in English!

vezycash 5y ago

> "The local language" is already a problem. There are countries where there are multiple local/national languages! I have this issue with Microsoft. The national language in my country is English. However, Microsoft's store defaults to a local language that I don't speak every single time. My IP is also not from a part of the country that speaks that language either.

liotier 5y ago

French native speaker here. UX consistency, shared Internet culture, habits from the early 90's and error messages I can actually find on the Web are the reasons why I always set my computing to the english language. I'm trying to have English language but metric units, 24 hour clock and ISO dates... Seldom can I achieve that. On the French-language mandatory corporate Windows laptop, Excel formulas are translated in French - so when searching for recipes on the web I have to translate them ! I enjoy sites such as Thomann.de which have separate settings for language, country and units of measurement.

toolslive 5y ago
Tip:Pretend to be Irish. You get English, but you also get SI and euro.
- geoduck14 5y ago
  > Tip:Pretend to be Irish Best tip I've seen all day!
SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago
I just have a custom locale for any UNIX-like systems I use. American English, UTF-8, 24-hour time, RFC-3339 dates, SI units, '.' decimal point, '_' thousands separator. I call it en_ENG, for the fictional land of Engineeristan.
- tut-urut-utut 5y ago
  Mind to share your LC_ settings?
  - SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago
    An explanation of all the valid fields can be found at [1]. Copy an existing locale, modify it to suit your needs. Don't forget to escape all characters as Unicode if you want it to support unicode. Compile & install as normal with localedef, add to `/var/lib/locales/supported.d`, run locale-gen, set the various `LC_` variables you want to use in `~/.profile` or `/etc/envionment` or whatever. This[2] askubuntu answer goes into more detail. [1] https://lh.2xlibre.net/locale/en_US/ https://lh.2xlibre.net/locale/en_US/ [2] https://askubuntu.com/a/162714 https://askubuntu.com/a/162714

onion2k 5y ago

These users will still want Google to return results in their native language. There are several layers available to Google though - - They could use the system language setting - They could use the browser's language setting - They could use the user's Google account setting if the user is logged in Corporations could set the system language, or the browser language, and it could still be overridden by the user in their Google account if they wanted to do that. Instead though, Google chooses to geolocate the user's IP address and use that which works for no one.

giancarlostoro 5y ago

…but chances are you are logged into Gmail which should know better… its just embarrassing honestly.

areoform 5y ago

They should give people the option at the top, and repeat it as necessary. They shouldn't just assume. That's the most annoying thing. When I travel, I still want to see stuff in imperial units, and Google just switches to Metric and stays stuck that way.

quantum_magpie 5y ago

But they already have a solution for this. They have a domain with the local country TLD for people who want that language. Why do they keep fucking with people accessing the english domain?

abeppu 5y ago

But Google is a bit unusual in that they both produce a very popular browser and very popular sites. Even if we suppose they know it's the case internally that many people have their browsers set to English but nevertheless want results in their local language ... they're also the ones producing a browser which allows one to set the preferred language which they then disregard.