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why are website language switchers in the current language? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by 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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[–] 19 points 1 year ago (9 children)

If people really insist then at least have a flag emoji

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  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago (3 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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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    I mean, if they insist on everything being in Dutch then at least include a flag. If you're going this deep on the UK obviously having the list in the native language is preferable.

    The reason for the list above being all in Dutch might be because it's a list of countries, not a list of languages. (I speak some Dutch)

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    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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