You can change the language by going into advanced tools but it's a bit buried because Google search fucking sucks now. The results will suck regardless of which language you choose. They show you what they want you to see, not what you are actually looking for.
And it doesn't work half the time. I don't know how Google decided a profile that's been using English for thirty years suddenly really wanted to see everything in Swedish but it would NOT accept it without swapping to another server first.
Uhhh…. Yes it does. I live in Spain and speak English, I’m not signed in, it’s down at the bottom of their page under settings or it will ask you like you see below. No vpn needed. And for apps on your phone it uses the regional setting, but most you can choose the default language in app settings.
Thought I was taking crazy pills, I've been changing language for search for years. The amount of people flat out agreeing with misinformation in this thread is wild. Plenty of great reasons to shit on Google but c'mon
Check my comment with screenshots of Google including results in Spanish despite having it set in English
It could be some AB testing or regional differences
AB testing or regional
No. This has been this way for at least a decade. I travel the world, use different phones and devices. This is 99% user error.
It has been this way ever since Google made your GMail Login your Google Account login in the 90's. I have a UK English Email and a US English Email because I liked that they called the 'Trash' the 'Bin' in Gmail and it was at least closer to Canadian English which to this day they refuse to recognize.
We can't rule out the service going to shit for no reason. I'm like 99% sure you used to be able to block YouTube channels, you can't do that anymore.
I do live in Spain and speak English too and it mixes English and Spanish. I have it set for both interface and results in English.
It is most egregious when looking for video games and products as their names appear in Spanish websites.
Adding the word “review” doesn’t always filter out the Spanish pages as it is adopted in tech websites.
EDIT: Typos
It will also open in the wrong language on every new profile, incognito mode, cookie clear, despite the browser clearly sending that it only wants english language. Likely as punishment for not being trackable.
And it'll ignore the settings for google maps, and always open in the local language anyway no matter what.
Some streaming services only offer translation subtitles related to the primary language of where you are.
So if I'm in Germany and want to watch a Swedish crime drama all i can get are German subs.
But if i use a vpn to say I'm in England... the English subs are magically available.
(Provided they also have the license to play the show in England).
I feel this is a meme the average sketchy VPN company would share in their social media to catch users.
I don't even use google. We are not the same
To search, no. But YouTube and Maps are hard to replace
Sometimes, sacrifices are necessary.
I gave up social media over a decade ago, and after a few weeks forgot all about it. Found other ways to fill my down time.
This past spring, dove into LineageOS, not using MicroG or anything. All FOSS or at least open source + Proton (along with SimpleLogin for aliases). No MS (besides work), no Google, no banking apps (use browser). Hell, I don't even have a SIM in my phone. I use jmp.chat (phone #) + Snikket (XMPP sever) and Cheogram (communication app for SMS and calls). Sure, explaining that sounds excessive, but to the average person, I've got 99%the same functionality everyone else does.
I get no more spam calls, my battery lasts 2-4 days depending on usage, WAY less email, and I've not received any emails or alerts about data breaches (so far).
Lemmy isn't social media?
I've tried alternatives to Maps but honestly nothing comes close.
All bank accounts I have require a phone to log in.
Lemmy is more like a large forum or series of forms. Most people are in communities because of common interest whereas social media is more like looking at people around you or whom you're friends with. It's also anonymous where SM is people standing on their little soap boxes subconsciously screaming, "look at me!".
I'm not saying map replacements are phenomenal. But CoMaps is using Open Street Maps, and for my measly little area I contribute a lot of data because POI are lacking. But for most use cases, its perfectly capable.
While yes, most/all banks require a phone number to login, they can't force you to use the app. My banks require phone numbers for the text verification. Better than nothing but still shitty MFA. So I login through the browser, not app, and I have a VoIP # for text verification codes to go to. Also, the browser UI is close enough to the mobile app it's easy enough.
My current problem with Google (and a problem that I never thought I would have wtfuck) is when I watch some YouTube videos in French the AI auto translates the goddamn audio to English. I don't want an AI audio translation of the fucking audio and there is no way to set the default not to do that. I have to manually go into the video EVERY TIME IT DOES IT to put it back to the original sound. It'll create new audio but I can't get half the videos to show the in language subtitles for non-english videos. SO DUMB.
YouTube does not autotranslate for any language which is set in your Google profile. It's hidden as hell, but for me adding e.g. English there made all the English videos not being ai translated anymore.
This is one of the stupidest “features” in the history of computing. It’s like google doesn’t believe in bilingual people. “If you speak English, there’s no way you could also understand French!”
Which is extra ironic since it’s all programmed by bi+lingual Indians lol.
If you're watching on mobile, YouTube Morphe has the option to disable the audio translation. You can even make a dedicated button for it in the player in case it gets toggled on again. The app also blocks ads and has SponsorBlock, DeArrow, and an AI slop filter built right in.
solution: newpipe/freetube
You guys still use google ? 😂😂😂
You use google
I usw duckduckgo
We are not the same
You use DuckDuckGo - I use SearXNG
We are not the same
You actually are the same. SearXNG aggregates DDG, unless you've told it not to. Remember, it's a metasearch aggregator not a search engine
Welp, that's my AKSHUALLY ASD moment for the day. Good day to you, sir.
People still use Google?
Lol! You can literally set your preferred language in "settings".
Seems like a good workaround. Why is the superior tone necessary?
Because even for that multi billion dollar company their developers still don't understand that country isn't equal to language preference. This has been an issue since the 90's that still isn't solved.
You still use google?
As a multilingual user, fuck me right! I hate it so much that video sites insist on translating video titles, as if I wanted to watch a video in a language I don't speak. Even a VPN doesn't quite solve this, because my normal usage when browsing e.g. YouTube isn't one language or the other but both (though I do prioritize videos in my native language).
You understood it wrong. The setting is in the browser itself. Just use anything except google. Maybe one day they will see the 0.001% dip in search and change it
Click on your profile bubble. On Mobile it's in the top right hand corner. Go to settings. Go to other settings. Language and region can be set manually.
Language and region can be set manually.
But not separately. You can't have the interface in English while on a non English speaking region.
And you can only set one language / region. I'm interested in results in a number of languages (ordered by priority), untranslated unless I fucking ask for a translation, and from a number of possibly unrelated regions (also ordered by priority).
And my region / language isn't an option anyway, so it's either the wrong, English speaking, region, or the closest region but the wrong language.
The whole concept is so profoundly imperialist and ignorant it makes me sick. Whoever perpetrated it is so tragically miseducated they can't even conceive the notion that their users might be able to understand more than one language, or be interested in more than one culture or region.
Last I checked hl=en from 20 years ago still works reliably across all products, but I can see the new slop slowly creeping up in everything, enjoy it while the slop haven't reached that part.
DuckDuckGo
I download all my podcasts with the VPN on my phone set to France or Ireland. The ads are adorably useless and a pleasure to hear.
I use a plugin for that:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/stay-in-my-language-google/
So do we actually respect the Accept-Language header or is that just for tracking now?
It's too bad Google doesn't have some sort of language translation software they could easily use.
Their translation software is total garbage.
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A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
