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

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

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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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[-] olafurp@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

If people really insist then at least have a flag emoji

[-] RickyRigatoni@retrolemmy.com 1 points 2 weeks 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

[-] olafurp@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

They're going to hiss at me aren't they?

[-] lucg@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week 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

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[-] emeralddawn45@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 weeks 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.

[-] psud@aussie.zone 1 points 1 week ago

The most recent update to Libre Office reset my UI language to one I don't know well enough to recognise. I uninstalled and reinstalled it.

[-] MudMan@fedia.io 1 points 2 weeks ago

Eh... why would including English help?

Ideally you keep each language in their own language so it can be recognized by native speakers. Flags help. Adding English to the native name... does not.

And of course if you're selecting a country, not a language, then it makes sense for the country list to be in the language you have selected. Why would you not know the names of countries in the language you chose for the interface? As somebody points out below, those are not language names in the screenshot.

[-] beerclue@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

I'm not saying it should include English, I was just using it for clarification. I think each language / country should be in the native language.

I only realized the list is a region selector after it was pointed out to me. Maybe this proves my point, I didn't know what the button I pressed was for :) Having the region/country name in the website language does make sense. Language names however...

Flags do help, but there are none in this example (mobile or desktop version). Sometimes flags can be confused too (Romania, Moldova, Chad).

I don't have a solution, and I'm not the usual ranter, I mostly post in the cooking community :)

[-] MudMan@fedia.io 1 points 2 weeks ago

Yeeeah, I don't know, it's an interesting UX question. For language selection, sure. For country? There are plenty of reasons why you may need to select a country name and not be clear on the native spelling of its name. Plus how do you end up in a country selector list in a language you don't understand?

I'll say that flagging the language selector for international users is even harder than the list itself. If you don't have an icon for it in particular. You can make the name cycle, but depending on where it's at it can be distracting or impractical. Accidentally changing the language to Hungarian (which may as well be an alien language, for how unrecognizeable its roots are if you don't speak it) was one of the few times I ended up having to delete a config file just to be able to use a piece of software again because I just could not find the lanuage selector after that.

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[-] Treczoks@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

The language selectors in the system I have built are either English or native. And I can tell you, implementing and verifying over 100 languages in their native writing is quite a challenge.

[-] Tattorack@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

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

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this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2025

155 points (98.7% liked)

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