Comment by thaumasiotes

Comment by thaumasiotes 5 hours ago

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> There was even a proposal to reduce this surface area, but it wasn't adopted:

>> Instead of sending a full list of the users' preferred languages from browsers and letting sites figure out which language to use, we propose a language negotiation process in the browser, which means in addition to the Content-Language header, the site also needs to respond with a header indicating all languages it supports

Who thought that made sense? Show me the website that (1) is available in multiple languages, and also (2) can't display a list of languages to the user for manual selection.

jm4 2 hours ago

What language do you put that list in? Would you still want to show it to every visitor when you know most of them speak a particular language?

I use to do some work in this area. The first question is difficult and the second is no. We had the best results when we used various methods to detect the preferred language and then put up a language selector with a welcome message in that language. After they made a selection, it would stick on return visits.

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  • thaumasiotes 42 minutes ago

    > What language do you put that list in? Would you still want to show it to every visitor when you know most of them speak a particular language?

    Judging by... a large number of websites, you make the list available in a topbar, and each language is named in itself. You don't apply one language to the entire list.

    Here's the first page that popped into my head as one that would probably offer multiple languages (and it does!):

    https://www.dyson.com/en

    They've got the list in a page footer instead of a header, but otherwise it's an absolutely standard language selector. It does technically identify countries rather than languages. The options range from Azərbaycan to Україна. They are -- of course -- displayed to every visitor.

    Why would you want to force someone to consume your website in the wrong language?

    And why would the list be in a single language, again?

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