This always annoys me. I land on a site that’s in a language I don’t understand (say, Dutch), and I want to switch to something else. I open the language selector and… it’s all in Dutch too. So instead of Germany/Deutchland, Romania/România, Great Britain, etc, I get Duitsland and Roemenië and Groot-Brittannië…

How does that make any sense? If I don’t speak the language, how am I supposed to know what Roemenië even is? In some situations, it could be easier to figure it out, but in some, not so much. “German” in Polish is “Niemiecki”… :|

Wouldn’t it be way more user-friendly to show the names in their native language, like Deutsch, Română, English, Polski, etc?

Is there a reason this is still a thing, or is it just bad UX that nobody bothers to fix?

  • MudMan@fedia.io
    0·
    2 days ago

    Eh… why would including English help?

    Ideally you keep each language in their own language so it can be recognized by native speakers. Flags help. Adding English to the native name… does not.

    And of course if you’re selecting a country, not a language, then it makes sense for the country list to be in the language you have selected. Why would you not know the names of countries in the language you chose for the interface? As somebody points out below, those are not language names in the screenshot.

    • beerclue@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      2 days ago

      I’m not saying it should include English, I was just using it for clarification. I think each language / country should be in the native language.

      I only realized the list is a region selector after it was pointed out to me. Maybe this proves my point, I didn’t know what the button I pressed was for :) Having the region/country name in the website language does make sense. Language names however…

      Flags do help, but there are none in this example (mobile or desktop version). Sometimes flags can be confused too (Romania, Moldova, Chad).

      I don’t have a solution, and I’m not the usual ranter, I mostly post in the cooking community :)

      • MudMan@fedia.io
        0·
        2 days ago

        Yeeeah, I don’t know, it’s an interesting UX question. For language selection, sure. For country? There are plenty of reasons why you may need to select a country name and not be clear on the native spelling of its name. Plus how do you end up in a country selector list in a language you don’t understand?

        I’ll say that flagging the language selector for international users is even harder than the list itself. If you don’t have an icon for it in particular. You can make the name cycle, but depending on where it’s at it can be distracting or impractical. Accidentally changing the language to Hungarian (which may as well be an alien language, for how unrecognizeable its roots are if you don’t speak it) was one of the few times I ended up having to delete a config file just to be able to use a piece of software again because I just could not find the lanuage selector after that.

        • Raptorox@sh.itjust.works
          0·
          2 days ago

          Plus how do you end up in a country selector list in a language you don’t understand?

          By clicking random buttons hoping to find the one that changes the language to one you can understand?

          • MudMan@fedia.io
            0·
            2 days ago

            Sure, but that’s a problem with the language selector setting, as I said above, not with the country list.