5 ms·

> Google Search automatically returns results in the language you choose for Google product text, but you can also request results in many other languages. Try

by 6ren 15y ago

> Google Search automatically returns results in the language you choose for Google product text, but you can also request results in many other languages. Try setting German at "For Google text" (first on language preference page). I did, and got several german hits. Whereas, merely adding "german" for the search results (second on language preferences page) didn't add any. It's a hassle, but a solution is to change your "For Google text" setting. for each language you want. It seems to me that the vastly greater number of english results would simply out-weigh the german resuls. The german results will still be there, but ranked much lower. What's curious to me is that you say Google didn't formerly do this. Maybe they changed the weighting of the various languages from being equal to being weighted according to the results. Probably searching with german terms will get german results, but again a hassle because you have to do it for each language. EDIT following guelo's comment on "verbatim" under "All Results -> More Search Tools" on the left hand side, there's also a "Translated foreign pages" option. This gave me several results in other languages. Sounds like what you want. BONUS: I noticed a "Search English and German pages" just under "Search the web" on the left hand side (I added German as a search language above). I think this is precisely what you wanted. Google is impressing me.

dkarl 15y ago
Google is impressing me. Really? All that to get what I used to get for free? Not to mention that German is just one language, and "translated foreign pages" sounds like it might search the translated text, which is nice, unless it doesn't deliver results in untranslated pages, which leaves me wondering whether Google translates all pages or just some, and whether it's sufficiently integrated with Google Translate to filter out words that can't be translated, which are often exactly the words I want. That puts me right back where I started, sitting in front of Google wondering how the hell it works and what it's filtering out of the internet as a result.
- 6ren 15y ago
  Wow, I go to some trouble to research your question for you, but you reply in complaint without trying it out. e.g. try it with more than one language selected for search. You can also test your questions with specific queries (e.g. using terms that seem unlikely to be translated). Also, consider that you didn't know what results Google wasn't returning in the first place, years ago (e.g. by not having indexed them). Google aims at working without thought. But it can only do so for one target audience, and unfortunately for technically minded folk, that target has to be mainstream users. Fortunately, technical folk are usually curious to explore and customize technology. EDIT just confirmed that it does use added search languages, as expected. e.g. if I add german and french, it provides: "Search English and French and German pages" Note: I'm not doing this for you; but because I'm curious.
  - dkarl 15y ago
    To be absolutely clear, I'm complaining about Google, not you, and I already said Google's behavior is better for most users. I'm not really sure what more I can say to be "nice" and still be honest, because I am angry that I was missing search results because of a behind-the-scenes change that I would only have discovered if I was regularly checking my preferences to see if the choices I made have been superseded and contradicted. And that's what I found: when they created this settings page they erased whatever language settings I had (which I think was just "yes, I would like to see languages other than English") and left only English selected. Honestly, you shouldn't be so sensitive that you perceive criticism of a web app as criticism of your advice, or assume that I didn't check up on it. I just wasn't happy about what I found. Per my first post, all I want is to be able to use Google and understand roughly what it's doing, and it failed very badly in this case, since the one thing I was counting on it to do -- include foreign language pages, because I asked it to -- was actually the thing it wasn't doing.
    - 6ren 15y ago
      > Not to mention that German is just one language You can add more than one language. If you'd checked up on it, you would have seen that. I perceive this as complaining about advice without following it, and I find it annoying. If you're still angry (and it sounds legitimate, especially if there was a subtle hint of a problem, but not enough to register fully), that explains where you're coming from, which puzzled me. Aside: Unfortunately with webpages/webapps, they can and do get updated continuously, without explicit version changes or any notification at all. Ideally, all changes would be back-compatible, but then you end up with a mess (both in user interface and implementation). Continuous notifications amounts to spam, and is usually ignored (I do). Change is a problem. I'm not sure there's a solution. I think back-compatibility is a deep, abiding, practical problem, in general. EDIT "if the choices I made have been superseded and contradicted": just realized this is more than merely "backcompatibility of UI". In effect, they have destroyed your data. Although that sounds overdramatic, since the data itself is very minor (perhaps one bit, a binary checkbox), it's a clear trigger for notification. There might be some grey area for when your configuration is still there, but has a different meaning - but I think you're saying that your config is no longer there, and/or no longer has an effect. I used to use Yahoo finance, and they had a nice display of 9 user-configured stocks at the top. In their latest redesign, this disappeared, and I couldn't find an option to bring it back. This was enough to make me spurn their product, and switch to google finance. It makes me think they have no idea what they are doing. I guess in this case, I had notification (as I could see it was gone). But if they had an explicit reference to it going away, even if it said "sorry, this is going away", I would feel better about it. And I have a sneaking suspicion that maybe it is still available somewhere, and I just couldn't find it. So, changing the meaning of a user-specified configuration should probably trigger an explicit notification (and force the implementer to consider it); and deleting user-specified configuration should never happen, even if it has no effect. I think it should be treated as sacrosanct as other data stored (e.g. gmail emails, dropbox files etc). If changes render it ineffective, it should still be there, but with a notice: "this no longer works, use this instead". Again, this forces the implementer to thin about what they are doing.

by 6ren 15y ago

dkarl 15y ago

Google is impressing me. Really? All that to get what I used to get for free? Not to mention that German is just one language, and "translated foreign pages" sounds like it might search the translated text, which is nice, unless it doesn't deliver results in untranslated pages, which leaves me wondering whether Google translates all pages or just some, and whether it's sufficiently integrated with Google Translate to filter out words that can't be translated, which are often exactly the words I want. That puts me right back where I started, sitting in front of Google wondering how the hell it works and what it's filtering out of the internet as a result.

6ren 15y ago
Wow, I go to some trouble to research your question for you, but you reply in complaint without trying it out. e.g. try it with more than one language selected for search. You can also test your questions with specific queries (e.g. using terms that seem unlikely to be translated). Also, consider that you didn't know what results Google wasn't returning in the first place, years ago (e.g. by not having indexed them). Google aims at working without thought. But it can only do so for one target audience, and unfortunately for technically minded folk, that target has to be mainstream users. Fortunately, technical folk are usually curious to explore and customize technology. EDIT just confirmed that it does use added search languages, as expected. e.g. if I add german and french, it provides: "Search English and French and German pages" Note: I'm not doing this for you; but because I'm curious.
- dkarl 15y ago
  To be absolutely clear, I'm complaining about Google, not you, and I already said Google's behavior is better for most users. I'm not really sure what more I can say to be "nice" and still be honest, because I am angry that I was missing search results because of a behind-the-scenes change that I would only have discovered if I was regularly checking my preferences to see if the choices I made have been superseded and contradicted. And that's what I found: when they created this settings page they erased whatever language settings I had (which I think was just "yes, I would like to see languages other than English") and left only English selected. Honestly, you shouldn't be so sensitive that you perceive criticism of a web app as criticism of your advice, or assume that I didn't check up on it. I just wasn't happy about what I found. Per my first post, all I want is to be able to use Google and understand roughly what it's doing, and it failed very badly in this case, since the one thing I was counting on it to do -- include foreign language pages, because I asked it to -- was actually the thing it wasn't doing.
  - 6ren 15y ago
    > Not to mention that German is just one language You can add more than one language. If you'd checked up on it, you would have seen that. I perceive this as complaining about advice without following it, and I find it annoying. If you're still angry (and it sounds legitimate, especially if there was a subtle hint of a problem, but not enough to register fully), that explains where you're coming from, which puzzled me. Aside: Unfortunately with webpages/webapps, they can and do get updated continuously, without explicit version changes or any notification at all. Ideally, all changes would be back-compatible, but then you end up with a mess (both in user interface and implementation). Continuous notifications amounts to spam, and is usually ignored (I do). Change is a problem. I'm not sure there's a solution. I think back-compatibility is a deep, abiding, practical problem, in general. EDIT "if the choices I made have been superseded and contradicted": just realized this is more than merely "backcompatibility of UI". In effect, they have destroyed your data. Although that sounds overdramatic, since the data itself is very minor (perhaps one bit, a binary checkbox), it's a clear trigger for notification. There might be some grey area for when your configuration is still there, but has a different meaning - but I think you're saying that your config is no longer there, and/or no longer has an effect. I used to use Yahoo finance, and they had a nice display of 9 user-configured stocks at the top. In their latest redesign, this disappeared, and I couldn't find an option to bring it back. This was enough to make me spurn their product, and switch to google finance. It makes me think they have no idea what they are doing. I guess in this case, I had notification (as I could see it was gone). But if they had an explicit reference to it going away, even if it said "sorry, this is going away", I would feel better about it. And I have a sneaking suspicion that maybe it is still available somewhere, and I just couldn't find it. So, changing the meaning of a user-specified configuration should probably trigger an explicit notification (and force the implementer to consider it); and deleting user-specified configuration should never happen, even if it has no effect. I think it should be treated as sacrosanct as other data stored (e.g. gmail emails, dropbox files etc). If changes render it ineffective, it should still be there, but with a notice: "this no longer works, use this instead". Again, this forces the implementer to thin about what they are doing.