Localisation woes
Two things that have bothered me today.
First off I log into MySpace only to be greeted by a welcome to the Swiss MySpace and in German! The login screen had mention of French so I chose that in order to understand what was happening. Once I had logged in I was directed to the UK MySpace.
Problem is I live in Switzerland but in order to ‘benefit’ from Swiss Groups or happenings I would have to accept MySpace in French. My Web language however is English. Why can’t we have a Swiss English Speaking Group ? I’m sure that Stephanie would have something to say about this over at Climb to the Stars as she has extensive coverage of language problems on the Web on her blog.
My mind has gone a complete blank for the other item I wanted to post here but I am sure it had something to do with a site assuming that because I am living in Switzerland I must speak Germann.
I get “junk mail” from Nero, Filemaker and Iris in German and there is no way to get them to change languages so all these messages get deleted.
I’m not an exception. A recent ethnological survey lists 12 living languages in Switzerland.
Websites should bear this in mind but at least leave English (as it tends to be a common language for many) when they are localising.
A major pain is EBay that directs Swiss customers to their German website or more subtly Swiss (French speaking) sites that direct their customers to French Websites. I’ll stop there or I’ll start ranting.
