- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@sidar.org>
- Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 13:16:21 +0100
- To: Marjolein Katsma <hgnje001@sneakemail.com>
- Cc: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
I agree that it is frustrating if the page doesn't tell you (very clearly, in the other languages available) how to get to other language versions. And I get really frustrated by having languages switched based on where I happen to be - Google does this in an attempt to be helpful, which isn't helpful when I can't even read the characters. But since there are also many people who can configure their own browser, I find it helpful to have language negotiation (so long as I can switch to another version, including the "original" if for some reason I want to). As a side note, I occasionally do multi-lingual content (typically english, french, spanish and italian, as in "EARL by example" - http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/talks/200311-earl/ if you want to see an example). Rather than having an initial version and translating it I work in whateveer language I have open at the time, then propogate the changes to another version, often further modifying my ideas. So the most up-to-date version could be in any of the four languages, and I try to keep them in synch within an hour or so. This is not likely to happen in a monolingual culture (or micro-culture, as small as a couple of offices) but I have observed it happening in a number of multi-lingual environments in Europe, and I suspect it is a reasonably important use case for authoring. cheers Chaals On 16 Mar 2004, at 12:29, Marjolein Katsma wrote: > I agree with Jesper and would go one step further: language > negotiation is a bad thing (and frequently highly irritating). If a > website is available in several languages, then the user interface of > the website must allow the visitor to choose whatever is most > convenient. And since a site must offer a user interface to allow the > user who may not be using *their* browser to switch languages, why use > language negotiation at all? > > BTW, websites that make you choose a country and then switch languages > are also ittitating: a, American in the Netherlands would most likely > prefer to read in English, regardless where she is. > > -- Charles McCathieNevile Fundación Sidar charles@sidar.org http://www.sidar.org
Received on Tuesday, 16 March 2004 07:19:19 UTC