this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2025

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478

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

submitted 1 week ago by beerclue@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

145 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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[–] Tattorack@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

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

[–] undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch 105 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (10 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 44 points 1 week ago (3 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...

[–] undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch 20 points 1 week 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?

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[–] scoutfdt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 1 week 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.

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[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 101 points 1 week 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 1 week 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 1 week ago (5 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.

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[–] BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 92 points 1 week ago (7 children)

Perfectly comprehensible if you speak english, look:

[–] PrettyFlyForAFatGuy@feddit.uk 19 points 1 week ago

I think i've had a stroke

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[–] raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 42 points 1 week ago (1 children)

because most web developers are morons :/

[–] tempest@lemmy.ca 40 points 1 week 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 1 week 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.

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[–] tiramichu@sh.itjust.works 38 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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.

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[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 26 points 1 week 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 1 week ago (7 children)

Which flag do we use for English?

I won't allow the stars and stripes

[–] Stovetop@lemmy.world 7 points 6 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 6 days ago

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

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[–] olafurp@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago (5 children)

If people really insist then at least have a flag emoji

[–] lucg@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days 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 18 points 1 week ago (2 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

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[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 1 week ago

Because they didn't think it through.

[–] curlywurly@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago (3 children)

this is a region switcher, rather than a language switcher (the website may of course be conflating the two, though)

[–] beerclue@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago

You are right, it is a region switcher. I didn't realize that, maybe because the "change region" button was in a language I didn't know? :)

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