Browser language: autodetect vs user select?

Question

I am designing a localized web app. I am leaning on auto-detect browser language setting. But I notice a number of respectable sites asking the user to select a language. Is there any usability issue you know of (from actual experiences out there) with just auto-detecting user language?

Thanks.

Answer 1

• Give me a choice
• Remember my choice
• Use the auto-detect as default
• Make transition easy

In many situation I prefer or even need the "original" over my local one, bad translations or different content being the major reason.

If you register multiple domains, you can base your auto-detect on that: When foo.com redirects me to foo.de, or otherwise shows me a german interface, it is actively ignoring my choice to go to foo.com.

MSDN did insist on showing me atrocious automatic translations and ALWAYS made me click to go to the readable, understandable english one (that's a step up: when they introduced it, the default selection for changing the language was something like Afrikaans).

Make transition easy: i.e. make it easy to go to the counterpart of the current page in a different language. Amazon often succeeds when I change ".com" to ".de", but then it fails to lead me to the german translation of the item. That's not always possible, as that requires each local view having the same structure and a 1:1 page mapping. But generally, you have to weight above requirements against other constraints of the project.

[edit] MSDN got better now :)

Answer 2

I would suggest to autodetect the language and display the site in this language or the default languge (probably english) if the translation is not available. Additionally present the user with a selection of languages on top or bottom of your page. The names of the languages should be written in the target language.

Don't do it like that: English, German, Italian.

But: English, Deutsch, Italiano.

Answer 3

Obviously there is the usability problem that you might detect a language that the user doesn't understand. How are you going to do the detection? Don't think everybody has their browser set to the correct language. IP-Adresses are also a very bad indicator for the users language.

Practical example: YouTube tried to convince me for a week or so to use the Japanese version, though I can't read Japanese. Not very helpful. Microsoft is also determined to serve me automatically translated versions of there documentation when I just want to read the English one.

So don't try to tell your users which language they're supposed to prefer, let them decide for themselves.

Answer 4

I really hate non-configurable auto-detection because a lot of applications are translated more than imperfectly. I would rather read perfect English than bad Russian. For example, some terms do not translate in a reasonable way, and trying to translate everything makes localized version faintly ridiculous.

Also some applications can not translate new features fast enough, leading to a mixed language.

So I always prefer to have a choice, and choose the version that is native to the application author -- for the best language (unless it is a language I do not know).

Update: One situation when it has gone beyond ridiculous is DB2 (or its client tools, not sure), which forced me to install a Russian version, but all errors in this version were shown as "???????? ??? ??? ??".