Why do sites insist on local language?

Question

If one takes Google or YouTube or Facebook or Outlook they default to local language. Can't they use the browser language or OS language to default to that language.I can forgive even 'regular sites' like Facebook, Outlook or YouTube. but increasingly even coding sites Github/Google Developers also do it. Why is it needed? Most devs I know of want to have menus/etc in English (as it helps searching or reading documentation).

quechimba · Accepted Answer

Yeah, it's kinda weird. I'm in Colombia and a lot of times I'm redirected to spanish versions of sites, although english is first in my accept-language.
To me it seems easier to display the page in a language matching the accept-language header than to do a geoip lookup and guess what language they want. In some countries they speak multiple languages so it doesn't even make sense to do geoip.
Most of my friends don't speak English so defaulting to English isn't a good solution either.

pandaec · Answer

The worst offender is YouTube which translates all video or music titles to English, but I already understand the original title. Translation often just made it harder to understand and to search.

MandieD · Answer

Even worse: when a translation of the page you clicked on into the language the site is forcing into your browser to doesn't exist/isn't properly linked, so you get bounced to the homepage in said language, possibly in a domain registered in said language's main country...

toast0 · Answer

You can't use browser or OS settings are english as an indicator that people want english, because english is usually the default and a lot of people end up with english based computing without meaning to or without english literacy.It would be different if there were a different accept-language set for user intentionally picked english vs default though. But approximately 3 people set the browser language settings ever; and nobody respects them so there's no incentive for anyone else to start, either.

lxgr · Answer

> Can't they use the browser language or OS language
In my experience, this is actually the norm these days.
Google used to insist on redirecting visitors to their local version, which got pretty annoying when traveling sometimes, but I haven't experienced that in a long time now.

kbrannigan · Answer

Since you're a dev you can adjust the settings to your needs. Change it to klingon if you want.The average user might not know so it's easier to default English is not the only language in the world.

mtz_federico · Answer

They should at least show a prompt asking if the user wants to use the first language in their accept-language or the one from their IP.