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by jobigoud 1558 days ago
> E.g. "Google is also available in: <insert foreign language here>"

This specific one might be on purpose to avoid translating language names. If you land in page entirely in Chinese but you see the word "English" in Latin characters under a link, you can click it to escape. But if it's itself in Chinese you'll never find it. I do the same in applications, have a menu for languages but don't translate language names, if you change language by mistake you can always find your way back.
2 comments
verve_rat 1558 days ago
The whole sentence "This page in English" or "This page in Mandarin" should be in English or Mandrin respectively.

Compare "Rirgwyd rkrgru dlwhgi ro English" to "This page in English". Which is better for people that only read English?

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Dylan16807 1558 days ago
They're pretty close.

And when a page is in the correct language, I would prefer not to have entire sentences in a different language.

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verve_rat 1558 days ago
If needs be put a "Language Settings" header above it or something, but if you can read the rest of the page then those sentences are not for you!
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Dylan16807 1558 days ago
If you have an area like that, I feel like you don't need full sentences at all.
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quitit 1558 days ago
While I used this example, which one could explain as intentional for various reasons. There are myriad other examples where there are dual languages being interwoven across google properties. Including minutia in one language, but the body content in another. Facebook/Meta's properties are the worst for this however and will intermingle languages frequently despite being an account-based service (literally ignoring the user's preferences in favour of IP-based guess work.)

Back to Google - Algorithmically there are likely straightforward reasons for why this is happening. Clearly the contents of the pages are composed from a mixture of sources, for reasons unknown these sources may not be able to detect or receive the localisation settings of the end user. Recent changes to privacy protections and cookie limitations may also be a contributor to these issues. Including the obvious: getting ads in the wrong language.

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