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To those people who don't browse the internet in multiple languages, allow me to elaborate. With the new translate popup, you have to acknowledge it before you

by halviti 12y ago

To those people who don't browse the internet in multiple languages, allow me to elaborate. With the new translate popup, you have to acknowledge it before you can continue typing. This means always having to press escape or cancel randomly when browsing the majority of webpages you visit. Worse, the popup only shows after the page is fully loaded, so if you are browsing a page that is slow to load for whatever reason, you're sure to get interrupted in the middle of whatever you are doing, and if you were typing something, you aren't anymore because you just lost focus. Now imagine this behavior on nearly every webpage. My options are to disable the translate feature, which I use quite a bit, or to just put up with a crappy user experience, which is what I've been doing. If you live in an English speaking country and only visit the occasional foreign website, you're likely never to notice this problem.

vilhelm_s 12y ago
What I don't understand is, why doesn't the "never translate pages in language X" option solve you problem? My own experience is that I often read pages in a couple of languages which I understand well (and don't want auto-translated, so I put those languages on the don't-translate list) and occasionally come across a page that seems interesting in a language what I don't understand (and then the offer to translate is helpful).
- aboodman 12y ago
  People are often reluctant to execute UI to permanently remember choices because they want to preserve the option to choose in the future. For example, say I have a workable command of French, but want the ability to translate French in the future in case I don't understand a particular paragraph. So I put up with the annoying dialog over and over because I'm afraid to not have it when I want it. Always/never UI is almost always a design failure IMO. Another example is the intent chooser in Android. I put up with the dialog that asks whether I want to use Gallery or G+ photos because I fear not being able to choose in the future when I have some other viewer I want to use, or when there is some particular feature of G+ that I learn about and want to use. In many cases this isn't rational if you think it through. There is probably some UI to reset the intent option somewhere, and finding it then is probably less time overall than dealing with this dialog over and over. But you don't think that through in the moment, you get slightly frustrated, press "not now" again, and get on with whatever you were trying to do.
  - jannes 12y ago
    You can always re-enable the translation popup through the page's context menu. It has an entry for "Translate to English" (or whatever your preferred language is) right there.
    - epistasis 12y ago
      The problem is that a "permanent" decision has to be made before the user has the option to discover how to make it less permanent. When it comes to UI issues, the existence of a solution with enough poking around is rarely a solution at all. The problem is that the UI is creating a conflict for the user at the beginning; being able to resolve a conflict is far worse than never creating the conflict at all.
      - dTal 12y ago
        >When it comes to UI issues, the existence of a solution with enough poking around is rarely a solution at all I have heard this pithily articulated in human factors as "if the user can't find it, the function's not there".
- halviti 12y ago
  Because I use the translate feature all the time! I don't want it gone! Here's a simple example for you: Bob lives in Norway, but doesn't know perfect Norwegian. He likes that google chrome/translate helps him read Norwegian webpages. Bob is always losing focus on his cursor because of the translate feature, it's even bothering him on websites in his native language due to all of the region based advertising. You're telling Bob that he should disable the option to translate Norwegian web pages, even though he reads them daily, and doesn't speak the language. Now do you see the problem? To be perfectly clear, this was not a problem when the translate option showed at the top of the page, but is a problem with the new "pop-up" style they are using which steals focus from the user.
  - JelteF 12y ago
    Why wouldn't he tick the always translate this language? I feel like it's very uncommon that someone would like a language translated half of the time. I'm Dutch myself, so I have English and Dutch never translated. And everytime I'm on a webpage with another language I like that I can ask Google to translate it for me and remember it for that language.
    - halviti 12y ago
      It doesn't matter how common it is. You never steal focus from the user, unless you're designing a system to purposefully interrupt someone.
      - hanifbbz 12y ago
        exactly. Now that the browsers have built-in popup blockers why should they show a popup of their own? It's like police selling weeds! WRONG! :-D
    - _delirium 12y ago
      As a non-Dane living in Denmark, I prefer pages to start out in Danish, and then to be able to click "translate" if I'm not able to successfully read it. I don't want to never translate Danish, but I also don't want it to translate right up front before I try to read it. Starting out in Danish and then having a little icon where I can click on a case-by-case basis to translate it is exactly the functionality I want, which is how it has worked so far.
- TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
  Because once one selects "never translate pages in language X", there's no easy way to translate a page in language X. This is explained in the article.
  - jannes 12y ago
    Yes there is! It's always in the context menu of the page, right next to "View Source."
- Freeboots 12y ago
  https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-translate/aapbdbdomjkkjkaonfhkkikfgjllcleb?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-translate/a... Translate page button.

by halviti 12y ago

vilhelm_s 12y ago

What I don't understand is, why doesn't the "never translate pages in language X" option solve you problem? My own experience is that I often read pages in a couple of languages which I understand well (and don't want auto-translated, so I put those languages on the don't-translate list) and occasionally come across a page that seems interesting in a language what I don't understand (and then the offer to translate is helpful).

aboodman 12y ago
People are often reluctant to execute UI to permanently remember choices because they want to preserve the option to choose in the future. For example, say I have a workable command of French, but want the ability to translate French in the future in case I don't understand a particular paragraph. So I put up with the annoying dialog over and over because I'm afraid to not have it when I want it. Always/never UI is almost always a design failure IMO. Another example is the intent chooser in Android. I put up with the dialog that asks whether I want to use Gallery or G+ photos because I fear not being able to choose in the future when I have some other viewer I want to use, or when there is some particular feature of G+ that I learn about and want to use. In many cases this isn't rational if you think it through. There is probably some UI to reset the intent option somewhere, and finding it then is probably less time overall than dealing with this dialog over and over. But you don't think that through in the moment, you get slightly frustrated, press "not now" again, and get on with whatever you were trying to do.
- jannes 12y ago
  You can always re-enable the translation popup through the page's context menu. It has an entry for "Translate to English" (or whatever your preferred language is) right there.
  - epistasis 12y ago
    The problem is that a "permanent" decision has to be made before the user has the option to discover how to make it less permanent. When it comes to UI issues, the existence of a solution with enough poking around is rarely a solution at all. The problem is that the UI is creating a conflict for the user at the beginning; being able to resolve a conflict is far worse than never creating the conflict at all.
    - dTal 12y ago
      >When it comes to UI issues, the existence of a solution with enough poking around is rarely a solution at all I have heard this pithily articulated in human factors as "if the user can't find it, the function's not there".
halviti 12y ago
Because I use the translate feature all the time! I don't want it gone! Here's a simple example for you: Bob lives in Norway, but doesn't know perfect Norwegian. He likes that google chrome/translate helps him read Norwegian webpages. Bob is always losing focus on his cursor because of the translate feature, it's even bothering him on websites in his native language due to all of the region based advertising. You're telling Bob that he should disable the option to translate Norwegian web pages, even though he reads them daily, and doesn't speak the language. Now do you see the problem? To be perfectly clear, this was not a problem when the translate option showed at the top of the page, but is a problem with the new "pop-up" style they are using which steals focus from the user.
- JelteF 12y ago
  Why wouldn't he tick the always translate this language? I feel like it's very uncommon that someone would like a language translated half of the time. I'm Dutch myself, so I have English and Dutch never translated. And everytime I'm on a webpage with another language I like that I can ask Google to translate it for me and remember it for that language.
  - halviti 12y ago
    It doesn't matter how common it is. You never steal focus from the user, unless you're designing a system to purposefully interrupt someone.
    - hanifbbz 12y ago
      exactly. Now that the browsers have built-in popup blockers why should they show a popup of their own? It's like police selling weeds! WRONG! :-D
  - _delirium 12y ago
    As a non-Dane living in Denmark, I prefer pages to start out in Danish, and then to be able to click "translate" if I'm not able to successfully read it. I don't want to never translate Danish, but I also don't want it to translate right up front before I try to read it. Starting out in Danish and then having a little icon where I can click on a case-by-case basis to translate it is exactly the functionality I want, which is how it has worked so far.
TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
Because once one selects "never translate pages in language X", there's no easy way to translate a page in language X. This is explained in the article.
- jannes 12y ago
  Yes there is! It's always in the context menu of the page, right next to "View Source."
Freeboots 12y ago
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-translate/aapbdbdomjkkjkaonfhkkikfgjllcleb?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-translate/a... Translate page button.