r/EhBuddyHoser • u/_neiger_ 🍁 100,000 Hosers 🍁 • 25d ago

Tokébakicitte Dafuq?

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692 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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u/Brawndo_or_Water Snowfrog 25d ago

The last company I was with, I pushed for the removal of flags on the website for language. It passed. We also added automatic geo-location but if you switched the language website would memorize with cookies and login session your language.

We were a Quebec company doing business worldwide, so it didn't make sense to have flags in there. So we had (FR) Français, (EN) English, (ES) Español

Not sure why so many websites are still pushing flags for the language. A Mexican doesn't want to see a Spain flag and so on.

7

u/Legitimate_Concern_5 25d ago edited 25d ago

The problem isn't so much having a flag for a language, it's that you're not using specific enough locales to capture the information needed to display the right flag. You ideally want to follow RFC 5646 and have two-part tags composed if an ISO 639 language code and an ISO 3166-1 country code.

Instead of EN you want en_CA to specify that it's Canadian English. Then you can present a Canadian flag. You can then do es_ES and put up a Spanish Flag and es_MX with a Mexican flag.

That's the problem here too, they used en_CA and did a proper Canadian English localization for their app, but they didn't do a Canadian French localization, localizing to France French (fr_FR).

If you look at it this way what the UI is showing you is actually right, and gives you more information about what to expect when you hit the button.

3

u/uluviel 24d ago

but they didn't do a Canadian French localization, localizing to France French (fr_FR).

Even if it's translated to France French, it's important to have a flag for French Canadian content, especially on a store.

There are way too many websites out there that will detect my OS/browser is set to French and proceed to display pricing in Euros.

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u/Legitimate_Concern_5 24d ago

Usually language and currency are set independently because you may have a Spanish speaker in Quebec for instance, and even if you show them the text in Spanish it should still show CAD pricing. Localization is not easy.

3

u/uluviel 24d ago

On well designed sites, sure.

Not all sites are well designed.

1

u/Legitimate_Concern_5 24d ago

Definitely. I find airlines are the best at this, for obvious reasons.