this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2025
428 points (97.6% liked)

Ask Lemmy

33091 readers
1942 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, 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 spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust 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:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] axEl7fB5@lemmy.cafe 1 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

Why not do both tho? Like "日本語 (Japanese)” So that if I fuck up my languages for some reason, I can turn back

[–] twice_hatch@midwest.social 10 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

We're saying, don't translate the language's names at all, use what the speakers call their own language.

English is always "English" regardless of UI language. French is always "Francais", Then you can switch to any language you can read

[–] silasmariner@programming.dev 1 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, and the comment you just replied to said: why not both? Language name in language up front, and language name in current language in parens. I think it's a neat idea and absolutely would support that as a standard.

[–] hraegsvelmir@ani.social 7 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

My big question would be what would that add? If you speak Japanese, Spanish and French, 日本語, Español and Français would give you all the information you need. Adding the language name in a second language would increase the work to do, while also not really providing any benefit that I can see. If you manage to change the language to Spanish, or are using somebody else's device, "English" is no less helpful for you than "English (Inglés)" would be.

[–] silasmariner@programming.dev 2 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

Easy enough. Tells you what languages are supported. Also helps you debug a bad language label. Although does have the disadvantage that you still need the name of every language in every language (the existing state) and you don't get to suddenly sqrt your data requirements for storing that

[–] cley_faye@lemmy.world 5 points 16 hours ago

But you can. Hopefully, you know how your language is called in your language, right?