this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2025

358 points (97.4% liked)

Ask Lemmy

33091 readers

1994 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

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

358

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

submitted 22 hours ago by beerclue@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

104 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

[–] raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 13 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

because most web developers are morons :/

[–] tempest@lemmy.ca 6 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] skisnow@lemmy.ca 3 points 4 hours ago

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.

[–] mechoman444@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago

You don't speak dutch? 🤮

[–] BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 72 points 17 hours ago (7 children)

Perfectly comprehensible if you speak english, look:

[–] PrettyFlyForAFatGuy@feddit.uk 13 points 14 hours ago

I think i've had a stroke

load more comments (6 replies)

[–] emeralddawn45@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 12 hours ago

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.

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 75 points 17 hours ago (8 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 34 points 16 hours 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

[–] LeninsOvaries@lemmy.cafe 6 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Out of curiosity, would you put Deutsch before or after 日本語?

[–] pitaya@lemmy.zip 4 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

Before, since D and G are both before N ("nihongo") and J ("japanese")

[–] Lyrac@programming.dev 3 points 5 hours ago

I think his point was that they are using different alphabets, and therefore can't be sorted "alphabetically"... there's no N or J in 日本語. In order to sort alphabetically, we would have to pick an alphabet, which will in some cases contradict the alphabet of the language's native speakers.

[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 19 points 16 hours ago (3 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.

load more comments (3 replies)

load more comments (5 replies)

[–] olafurp@lemmy.world 17 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

If people really insist then at least have a flag emoji

[–] Scrollone@feddit.it 15 points 10 hours ago (1 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

[–] Evotech@lemmy.world 5 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

You use both obviously

[–] leftzero@lemmynsfw.com 3 points 5 hours ago

Like this?

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 English
🇺🇸 English (simplified)

[–] RickyRigatoni@retrolemmy.com 14 points 13 hours ago

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

[–] undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch 89 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (18 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…

load more comments (18 replies)

load more comments