First published: 31st July 2008
Allan Dyer
The Accept-Language HTTP header has been part of the web standards for over a decade, but still many multi-lingual sites ignore it and, in the worst cases, use unsuitable methods for selecting the language. An example I came across recently is the latest version of the Trend Micro website.
The basic idea is that the user's browser sets a header in each request, specifying the user's language preferences, and the website responds with the most appropriate version of the document that it has available. The user can set their preferences in their browser options (in Firefox, Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Languages, Choose), and the browser will take care of sending this to every site they visit.
What happened on the Trend Micro site? Until recently, going to www.antivirus.com got you Trend Micro's English site. On a recent visit, I found that I now got a Simplified Chinese version of the site. In fact, there is a permanent redirect on http:/www.antivirus.com/ that points to http://www.trendmicro.com/, and that site serves a permanent redirect to http://cn.trendmicro.com/cn/home/. It appears that, in their wisdom, Trend Micro has decided to use the location of the IP address to determine the language the user requires. They have also decided that Simplified Chinese is the most appropriate language variant for Hong Kong. Wake up, Trend! Traditional Chinese is the most commonly used form of Chinese in Hong Kong.
In Trend Micro's world, countries have a single official language (Hong Kong has two official languages), and no-one visits or lives in another country. What about expatriates, tourists and business travelers? Trend does offer a way out - the first line of the site says, "This site is for visitors in China | United Kingdom | 全球网站", the last two being links to alternate sites. Of course, unless you understand Chinese, you will not realise that the Chinese text says "Worldwide".
So, the English-reading visitor, overcoming their annoyance, can follow the link to the UK site. where the top line reads, "This site is for visitors in United Kingdom/Ireland | Worldwide". Following the Worldwide link, and clicking Asia on the map reveals that the recommended URL for Hong Kong (and most other places in Asia) is http://apac.trendmicro.com. That site is in English.
No doubt Trend Micro considered making their website multi-lingual an improvement, but they spectacularly failed to consider minority visitors. If I was planning the site, I would first consider that they provide two types of information: information that is location specific, such as support contact points and local distributors, and information that is global, such as virus descriptions and product features. The global information should, ideally, be available in all languages, regardless of location. The location specific information might be restricted to particular locations, and to the official languages (note the plural) for the location, if resources are an issue.
Of course, the Accept-Language header is not always correct - the user may not know how to change it, and travelers in Internet Cafes will be a common example of users browsing from a machine that is not their own. The obvious way to deal with this is for sites to, by default, follow the browser language preferences, but to always provide links to the alternative language versions available for the current page.
Excellent discussion of the issues and configuration examples are available from W3C. To check your browser language preferences, try our Browser Language Preference Report.
Updated: 22nd July 2008
Trend Micro is not the only anti-virus company that is confused about the relationship between people, countries and languages. The following message was displayed during the installation of McAfee VirusScan USB:
Select your country
McAfee will use this information to determine which Web site can best serve you.
The list included, "Chinese - China", "English - Canada", "English - US". Is the user selecting a language, or a location? Is the Chinese Traditional or Simplified? Have the dialects in Canada and USA diverged so far that they should be considered distinct languages, or does the large physical separation of the countries make web-surfing slow between them? Which option, for example, should a Czech who learnt English in South Africa living in Hong Kong choose?
