this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2025

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484

why are website language switchers in the current language? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 days ago by beerclue@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

149 comments fedilink hide all child comments

This always annoys me. I land on a site that's in a language I don't understand (say, Dutch), and I want to switch to something else. I open the language selector and... it's all in Dutch too. So instead of Germany/Deutchland, Romania/România, Great Britain, etc, I get Duitsland and Roemenië and Groot-Brittannië...

How does that make any sense? If I don't speak the language, how am I supposed to know what Roemenië even is? In some situations, it could be easier to figure it out, but in some, not so much. "German" in Polish is "Niemiecki"... :|

Wouldn't it be way more user-friendly to show the names in their native language, like Deutsch, Română, English, Polski, etc?

Is there a reason this is still a thing, or is it just bad UX that nobody bothers to fix?

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[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 26 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This should be a universal symbol. Like a flag in the corner you can pretty safely assume might be for language. And then yeah each language listed in that language.

[–] withabeard@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 day ago (7 children)

Which flag do we use for English?

I won't allow the stars and stripes

[–] SkyezOpen@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago

Why would they use the American flag for English? We speak American. /s kinda?

[–] Stovetop@lemmy.world 7 points 18 hours ago

Usually services in English will have English (US) and English (UK). Sorry to all the other English-speaking countries out there, though.

[–] sunbytes@lemmy.world 14 points 22 hours ago

Every time I make a tool like this, I try to wind up any Americans in the company by putting the US flag as English (simplified) and the Union Jack as English

It's a fun back and forth we have switching it between the two (inevitably someone makes a PR to put it back, and we go on)

[–] Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 2 points 21 hours ago

🇮🇳 obviously.

[–] iknowitwheniseeit@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

I have seen at least one site where they used the English flag. Luckily I have watched the European Cup a few times and could recognize it.

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 6 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Wow, the actual English flag, not the Union Jack?

I imagine that would trip up quite a few people even though there is a cheeky aspect of technical correctness to it.

[–] iknowitwheniseeit@lemmynsfw.com 4 points 19 hours ago

Yes, the actual English flag, not the British flag.

[–] apelsin12@sopuli.xyz 2 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Have different locales for uk and us

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 2 points 19 hours ago

And I absolutely would not be able to resist labeling these as:

English, U
English, No U

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[–] raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 44 points 1 day ago (1 children)

because most web developers are morons :/

[–] tempest@lemmy.ca 38 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's more like "localization is hard and you have a week to add support for it"

[–] skisnow@lemmy.ca 18 points 1 day ago (12 children)

Yes, this one. i18n was a three day training course at my last workplace, because things that seem really obvious if you’re an Arabic speaker browsing a Russian website, aren’t at all visible to the original developer who has their environment set to English, develops in English, puts all the frontend labels in a “messages” config file to be sent for translation by another department in another country, and will likely never even see the end result.

[–] Samskara@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 day ago

The translators often have zero context and don’t know what the UI even looks like or what the software does.

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[–] BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 94 points 1 day ago (7 children)

Perfectly comprehensible if you speak english, look:

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[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 100 points 1 day ago (19 children)

I've seen language switchers with translated language names that were sorted by the English name. So "Deutsch" was sorted under G.

[–] mle86@feddit.org 45 points 1 day ago

Yeah that happened on Microsofts knowledgebase sites for years...

So annoying. But cant blame such a small company for not fixing that, they probably couldn't afford to fix it /s

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[–] undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch 108 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (22 children)

It would be way more user-friendly to use the language in the HTTP headers. As a web developer the fact that websites are too stupid to do this really grinds my gears. This is just as bad as assuming the language/region from the geolocation of the IP address.

C’mon guys…

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