Rather than defaulting to English, why not default to whatever the browser's OS is set to?
As someone who develops multi-lingual web sites, I can tell you this doesn't work.
It should work, but it doesn't. We test with actual users in their home environments, and... people are messy.
- The vast majority of our users accept the default language (English) when setting up their computers, even if they don't speak English.
- In households where the parents are immigrants, very often the children set up the computer, so it's set to English, which is the child's preference, even if the parents don't speak English.
- Poor households often share a phone or a computer, and each person may not speak or prefer the default language that was chosen by the person who set up the computer.
In the idealized world that Silicon Valley imagines where 1 person uses 1 computer with 1 owner and speaks 1 language, it's fine. But in the real world, it's just a mess.
I'm not saying abandon multilingual capabilities, I'm saying Rather than defaulting to English, why not default to whatever the browser's OS is set to?.
This was in response to a comment chain suggesting that geofencing default language is a bad option, because of how inaccurate it can be.
> - In households where the parents are immigrants, very often the children set up the computer, so it's set to English, which is the child's preference, even if the parents don't speak English.
I fail to see how any default language setting will help in this scenario, assuming they've immigrated to an English-speaking geographic region.
> - The vast majority of our users accept the default language (English) when setting up their computers, even if they don't speak English.
I suppose this is one scenario where geofencing might work better than OS default language, but then again, based on my experience it's just as likely to be wrong. At least with English it'd be an interface they're accustomed to seeing, and would have better luck finding the website's language selector, rather than something more arbitrary :/
Firefox (and I suspect other browsers) allow per-profile configuration of the language, independent of the OS.
In the scenarios you describe, it's hard to see how geolocation makes things better, as it has all the same problems, except for the "installed in English because didn't change the default" where you now have a chance (but no guarantee) you'll select the correct language.
And unlike configuring the language in the browser, there's no hope geolocation could even possibly work correctly.
>In the idealized world that Silicon Valley imagines where 1 person uses 1 computer with 1 owner and speaks 1 language, it's fine. But in the real world, it's just a mess.
In Silicon Valley geolocation works fine, but it's a terrible, terrible, TERRIBLE idea everywhere else.
As someone who develops multi-lingual web sites, I can tell you this doesn't work.
It should work, but it doesn't. We test with actual users in their home environments, and... people are messy.
- The vast majority of our users accept the default language (English) when setting up their computers, even if they don't speak English.
- In households where the parents are immigrants, very often the children set up the computer, so it's set to English, which is the child's preference, even if the parents don't speak English.
- Poor households often share a phone or a computer, and each person may not speak or prefer the default language that was chosen by the person who set up the computer.
In the idealized world that Silicon Valley imagines where 1 person uses 1 computer with 1 owner and speaks 1 language, it's fine. But in the real world, it's just a mess.