Web-applications: Speak the right language, please

The most frustrating thing in localized applications is when you can’t find the way to change the language it uses, to the one of your choice. Imagine you’re in a remote location where you don’t speak the language and there’s just no way to translate what other people are saying – it can get complicated really fast. The same thing happens with web applications – if your application is multilingual, don’t force people into a language unless you’re absolutely positive it’s the language the user prefers (or more importantly, understands).

It’s not uncommon when even Google falls for it

You may think this is an uncommon error, because only a small number of applications are multi-lingual, but as a classic example, here’s Google’s search preferences page. Google automatically detects the country you’re in and sets the language by default (unless you instruct it not to on that screen). Now the problem is obvious. If I don’t speak the language, how am I going to figure out how to change it in the first place?

It gets (a little) worse

That’s only the first mistake, though. The second mistake is a little more grave than that. Lets say I figure out that the way to change my language in that screen is by using the drop-down select. Google has translated the language names as well, which means that with my Google preferences set to portuguese by default, “English” doesn’t even show up as “English” but “Inglês”. Now, that’s fine for me who can understand both languages just fine. But what if I didn’t? What if my language was english and I had no idea how to spell english in whatever language Google had selected for me?

So the lesson is obvious: multilingual, yes of course. However, let that be languages that the user actually understands, and give him the ability to change (properly).