this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2025
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I can’t believe nobody has done this list yet. I mean, there is one about names, one about time and many others on other topics, but not one about languages yet (except one honorable mention that comes close). So, here’s my attempt to list all the misconceptions and prejudices I’ve come across in the course of my long and illustrious career in software localisation and language technology. Enjoy – and send me your own ones!

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[–] darklamer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Geolocation is an accurate way to predict the user’s language.

Now that's a pet peeve of mine, a bizarre belief surprisingly often held by people, who must be oblivious to the existence of tourism.

[–] dohpaz42@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This. When I was in Mexico on my honeymoon, Google kept redirecting me to their .mx version of Google; despite my inability to read Spanish.

[–] 30p87@feddit.org 1 points 1 week ago

And I always want the english version instead of the german version, despite me being german. Literally only google fucks that up. Every other site, even the small local german Uni website or the canteens meal site, respects my browsers setting. Google does not, and serves me german.

[–] peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

It would be a useful way to predict it possibly, but presumably the author meant if you have support for localization, you also provide an obvious and easy means of changing the language.

More importantly, you should be using the language an existing user has already used in the past.

Edit: come to think of it, this is less a programmer problem, and more of a UX problem. Obviously as programmers we need to take UX into consideration, but in all my products I've worked on, UX is specified already by a UX designer.

[–] LaggyKar@programming.dev 1 points 1 week ago

It's not even that, there are multiple languages spoken in the same region. Webpages should just use the language the browser tells it to use.