Automatically Select Locale for Users

[milotype]

Feature Request

Make the website automatically recognize the user's language/locale settings (browser or OS settings) and show the website in that language.

Please also consider my suggestion in issue #61. This enables the user to automatically read the website's contents in his/her langauage, but still be able to switch to another language if needed.

[danyeaw]

I looked at this a bit. It looks it isn't a good practice to automatically redirect users based on language. All methods of automatically detecting a user's preferred language are flawed, and we may just end up confusing users and hurting our SEO.

We could add a warning to the page:

This page is in German but your browser is set to prefer English. An English version of this page is available if you would prefer it.
[Switch to English]

[danyeaw]

@milotype What do you think of the warning idea?

[milotype]

@danyeaw I don't agree with the warning.

I'd still suggest (and @ovari agrees) to use the user's language/locale settings (browser or OS settings) when opening the website.

Please consider I'm not a progammer. I have basic knowledge about programming and localization of web sites and SEO. Nevertheless, IMO, automatic usage of localized/translated web pages does not confuse users nor does it hurt SEO (if appropriate metadata are used).

[danyeaw]

Hi @milotype, https://developers.google.com/search/docs/specialty/international/managing-multi-regional-sites#let-the-user-switch-the-page-language says specifically to avoid automatically redirecting.

[milotype]

@danyeaw @ovari
Yes Google says so. But IMO, it's just Google's recommandation.

On the other hand, when I use the following URLs in my MacOS Firefox (OS and Firefox are set to Croatian) the "Croatian" pages open automatically (independant of the search engine, Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo):
https://apps.gnome.org => https://apps.gnome.org/hr/
https://flathub.org => https://flathub.org/hr

Some sites don't even use separate "hr" URL slugs and still the "Croatian" pages appear:
https://www.gnucash.org/

As I'm not a programmer, I don't know how these sites provide automatic translated/localized pages. But it is definitely possible and I'm never confused about it. Au contraire! I'm glad not to have to switch the language in some sort of a menu for changing languages!

Nevertheless, I'd suggest to keep the "language menu", so users can change the language if they wish.

As always, it's your project, so the decision is up to you. ;-)

[danyeaw]

See I think the GNOME Apps experience isn't great. If I try to go to /hr, I get redirected to /en, and I have to override it with the language selector. I could see redirecting just the / URLs though.

This isn't actually supported by the i18n plugin we are using, but you could vote for it here: untra/polyglot#121

[milotype]

@danyeaw
I don't know about your settings. Maybe that's why you are experiencing the situation as you describe.

I still vote for automatic localization/translation of the website in whatever way possible.

If possible implement my suggestion, otherwise leave it as is.

[ovari]

@danyeaw Hope the following helps in enabling auto-detection of the locale and redirection.

Firefox > Settings > General > Language > Magyar (Hungarian)

Opening the following websites, redirects and opens in the Hungarian locale:

• https://www.thunderbird.net/ → https://www.thunderbird.net/hu/
• https://flathub.org/ → https://flathub.org/hu
• https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/ → https://www.mozilla.org/hu/firefox/
• https://news.google.com/ → https://news.google.com/home?hl=hu&gl=HU&ceid=HU:hu (does that mean that Google doesn't follow their own recommendation?)

If people go to the root website, i.e. https://gaphor.org/, please auto-direct to the locale if available, i.e. https://gaphor.org/hu/

This would provide consistency with the convention of other well-known websites.

Thank you