this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2025

489 points (97.5% liked)

Ask Lemmy

33124 readers

998 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Rules: (interactive)

1) Be nice and; have fun

Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them

2) All posts must end with a '?'

This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?

3) No spam

Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.

4) NSFW is okay, within reason

Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].

5) This is not a support community.

It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.

6) No US Politics.

Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online

Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

Bluetreefrog@lemmy.world

TheSaneWriter@lemm.ee

TheSaneWriter@lemmy.thesanewriter.com

Asudox@lemmy.world

lemmy_bot@lemmy.world

beefbaby182@lemmy.world

ModeratorCan@lemmy.world

neidu3@sh.itjust.works

asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev

candyman337@lemmy.world

candyman337@sh.itjust.works

489

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

submitted 3 days ago by beerclue@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

152 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?

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] Tattorack@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Yeah, that's weird. They should be written in Klingonese.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 26 points 2 days 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 16 points 2 days ago (10 children)

Which flag do we use for English?

I won't allow the stars and stripes

[–] sunbytes@lemmy.world 14 points 2 days 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)

[–] Stovetop@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago

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

[–] SkyezOpen@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

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

load more comments (7 replies)

[–] raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 45 points 2 days ago (1 children)

because most web developers are morons :/

[–] tempest@lemmy.ca 38 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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

[–] skisnow@lemmy.ca 19 points 2 days 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 2 days ago

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

load more comments (11 replies)

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 103 points 3 days ago (14 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 3 days 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

[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 26 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It's not my fault if the Scrum Master can't provide a proper scope in the ticket. They said change the names, not the sorting.

[–] Geth@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 3 days ago (4 children)

The scrum master is not a product owner and shouldn't be providing scope or anything for that matter in tickets. No wonder agile is hated and dying, it's been corrupted beyond recognition by people who have no reading comprehension.

load more comments (4 replies)

load more comments (12 replies)

[–] BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 94 points 3 days ago (7 children)

Perfectly comprehensible if you speak english, look:

[–] PrettyFlyForAFatGuy@feddit.uk 20 points 3 days ago

I think i've had a stroke

load more comments (6 replies)

[–] undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch 108 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (11 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…

[–] whyNotSquirrel@sh.itjust.works 46 points 3 days ago (2 children)

the last one piss me off so much, especially when they redirect you and you don't have anyway to load the English version...

[–] CatLikeLemming@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Even worse when a version is actually different. I had to check the US prices in a store once, it decided "nah mate, your IP's not American, clearly you're a bloody idiot, here's your native version" and even when I manually changed the url to US English, as they did languages based on part of the path, it still decided clearly I must not know what I want. I couldn't even try to infer the price, as the product didn't exist on my version of the site.

And aside from that and language pet peeves, what if you're on Holiday? Or live in an area that speaks a lot of languages close together?

As Cousin Mose said, the language is in the header, the fact that some web devs decide the IP address is clearly a better way to figure out what language you want is insane

[–] DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 day ago

Yes, apparently I learned Swedish as soon as I stepped off the plane in Stockholm. I'm even logged into your site and you have my home address, you twits.

[–] undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch 21 points 3 days ago (2 children)

It’s like all the developers in the field got handed access to some IP dataset and they’re just looking for reasons to use it. Screw the users I guess?

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] scoutfdt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 3 days ago (8 children)

My Pixel started giving me distances in miles once because I had the system language to English. I needed to change it to English (German) to show me meters. I don't know if they reverted that but at this point I am too afraid to change it.

load more comments (8 replies)

load more comments (9 replies)

[–] tiramichu@sh.itjust.works 39 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (4 children)

The reality is, it varies.

I just opened the language picker on the first site I had in my browser tabs (happened to be Epic games) and they display the language list using native names for the target language, rather than current language (screenshot attached)

I agree it's much better to do it this way.

As a developer, why it doesn't happen sometimes could just be by accident. If you intentionally set out to localise a site and put all text and menu elements into localisation files to be translated, then the language names are going to end up getting translated too. It takes conscious thought and UX design to realise that it's better for accessibility if that single part of the site is actually just static text, regardless of what language is selected.

And before anyone suggests using country flags in your language picker as a cool solution - please don't, because that sucks too. There isn't a 1:1 relationship between countries and languages and so the flag approach is a flawed compromise at best, and actually insulting at worst.

load more comments (4 replies)

[–] olafurp@lemmy.world 19 points 3 days ago (3 children)

If people really insist then at least have a flag emoji

[–] lucg@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Unicode consortium stopped accepting new flags. Far, far from all current languages are in there. Don't expect there to be an emoji for every language, and fewer and fewer as the current version ages and flags change

And that's regardless of that flags are often a poor language selector (south african flag can mean a lot of things), but if you insist then SVGs of what regions you want to support might be a good replacement

[–] Scrollone@feddit.it 19 points 2 days ago (3 children)

No, flags for languages are a bad thing.

If you put a Swiss flag, what language would it be? (They speak 4 languages in Switzerland)
What flag would you use for English? The UK? The US?

More details here: https://localizejs.com/articles/why-using-flag-icons-can-confuse-your-users

load more comments (3 replies)

[–] RickyRigatoni@retrolemmy.com 15 points 3 days ago (2 children)

that's all fine and dandy until you get a porch of geese angry at you for using the brazilian flag or vice versa

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] emeralddawn45@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Ive had multiple situations on websites or in games where i accidentally switched the language to like- japanese or something and then had to fumble around trying to switch it back. On websites at least you can translate to find the right option but i recently installed a game on my steamdeck and the input was all screwed up, and while trying to fix it i accidentally switched the language and then navigated away from the menu. Trying to get back to the right setting with broken input and not understanding anything wasnt fun.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 3 days ago

Because they didn't think it through.

load more comments