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I suspect that many people who deal with languages only speak English and never left the US. They have been told that other languages exist and that foreign countries exist, and they have to do something about it, and they did... something.

I remember a company I worked with used to have its internet connection go through German servers, even though it was in France. I remember the presentation page for one of Google's phone was in German with no way to have it in anything else. Using a ".fr" domain, "accept-language", logged into a French Google account, I also tried English too, no luck. I only managed to get some UI elements in something other than German, it felt like a troll. I wonder how the Swiss (a small country with 4 official languages) are doing.

In addition to the idea that the IP address is a pretty bad indicator of the language you speak, some websites have trouble with the idea that people can understand more than one language.

Hey, YouTube, I know I have set my account to French, but I understand English and you know it, so please don't auto-translate video titles for me and do a terrible job at it. And I don't want to set my account to English, because I guess it would translate French titles into English, which I want even less.




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