Google's link to French privacy fine crashes watchdog's site

Re:Google's link to French privacy fine crashes watchdog's site by laumars on Monday February 10, 2014 @12:18PM (#7212208)

Every country does that to some degree, even the Americans. One thing that always niggles me is when I see an icon for the American flag for English in language options on web sites. Given the number of countries which have English as one of the primary languages (just off the top of my head: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, South Africa and, of course, the UK) it seems slightly misplaced for an American developer to put an American flag for English language options. Just as you wouldn't want a Mexican developer use a Mexican icon for Spanish language options.

A lot of the examples in the article you linked to makes complete sense too. In most of those cases the nouns are what's been translated and the proper nouns have been largely left in English; as far as I know, that's how languages normally work. That said, I don't see the point to the governments alternative word for e-mail.

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Re:Google's link to French privacy fine crashes watchdog's site by roywiggins on Monday February 10, 2014 @05:24PM (#7214271)

In some cases it makes sense. Date, number and measurements vary a lot between English speaking countries. Now, you'd probably just geolocate but still- locale is more than language. An American Flag can give you an en-US locale, a UK flag, en-GB, etc since English is a pretty good guess for the language they want.

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Re:Google's link to French privacy fine crashes watchdog's site by laumars on Monday February 10, 2014 @06:19PM (#7214502)

That's fine if you do have different locales, and I also find it acceptable when software labels their language as "American English" or "English (American)" (the latter being preferable, former acceptable). But when your options are only European flags (Spanish, French, German, etc) and the American one (and maybe some Asian flags depending on how global the product is), but I'd personally say the language overrides the locale.

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Re:Google's link to French privacy fine crashes watchdog's site by freehunter on Monday February 10, 2014 @04:27PM (#7213978)

If the software/web page is meant to be consumed primarily in the US when used in English, would it make sense to put an Indian flag there?

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Re:Google's link to French privacy fine crashes watchdog's site by lmm on Monday February 10, 2014 @05:13PM (#7214224)

The fact that you've got a language selection at all implies that it's an international site. If it's a store or some such it would be a very unusual American website that shipped abroad but not to Canada.

(I'm not sure what "meant to be consumed primarily in the US" even means; I don't have national borders in mind when writing. For most sites it makes very little difference which country a visitor happens to be from.)

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Re:Google's link to French privacy fine crashes watchdog's site by freehunter on Monday February 10, 2014 @05:54PM (#7214394)

The US and Canada have the primary language of English. But Canada also has French, and certain sections of the US have Spanish as a predominant language. Just one example: If I have a US company that also ships to Canada, it makes sense to have the US flag for English and the French (or Canadian?) flag for French Canadian. It also makes sense to have the Mexican flag for the Spanish option, because most of my Spanish speaking customers are likely to hail from Mexico, with a small number from other Central American countries.

What would not make sense is to have a UK flag for American customers, a Spanish flag for Mexican customers, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo flag for French, just to appease people who will never buy from my site. You might not have national borders in mind, but it pays to know what language your customers speak as well as what countries they are from.

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Re:Google's link to French privacy fine crashes watchdog's site by laumars on Monday February 10, 2014 @06:27PM (#7214532)

In those instances I'd probably suggest going for a American/British flag [1] or maybe the same thing with the American/Canadian flag?

[1] http://thecultureur.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/e7qd6.jpg

However I can forgive the use of the American glaf in your example as if you're shipping software then that's a little different as it's a targeted application rather than my example example of a public facing website which would have people from all nationalities visiting.

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Re:Google's link to French privacy fine crashes watchdog's site by laumars on Monday February 10, 2014 @06:15PM (#7214484)

If you've got different language options then it's not aimed primarily at the US

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Re:Google's link to French privacy fine crashes watchdog's site by freehunter on Monday February 10, 2014 @06:41PM (#7214609)

I had this discussion recently due to the Coke commercial during the Super Bowl, but I'll give you the highlights.

Not everyone in the US speaks English as a primary language.

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Re:Google's link to French privacy fine crashes watchdog's site by laumars on Monday February 10, 2014 @07:01PM (#7214692)

I appreciate what you're saying but number of public websites with different language options which weren't meant for countries outside of the US is going to be pretty low relative to the alternative. Occam's Razor would suggest those sites are generally intended for international consumption.

However, to get back to my original point, I was commenting about how all countries nationalise common language; and regardless of the justification of using an American flag for English language options, it's still an example of that point.

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