Discussion: Edge displays in an unexpected language

Microsoft
Hey Insiders, thanks for your continued feedback to help us improve Microsoft Edge! Recently we have noticed a trend in feedback stating that Edge is displaying in an unexpected language. Receiving this feedback is helpful in highlighting the importance of Edge meeting your global readiness expectations.
 
Global readiness can be difficult to get right with users speaking several languages, living in other countries, and wanting to see web content from other parts of the world. Edge tries to manage this with the 'Preferred' languages' list in Edge Settings (edge://settings/languages). The order of the languages signals to webpages what languages (or locales) you prefer. While this is a standard web practice, not all sites respects this signal from web browsers and sometimes use your IP address to determine the best language and regional content to display to you.
 
For Edge on Windows, 84 of the preferred languages can be selected as the Edge display language which determines the language and regional formatting of the Edge user interface. For Edge on Mac, the same 84 display languages can be set based on the operating system display language. Note, changing the Edge display language will put that language at the top of your preferred language list in Edge, but you can always re-order and add more languages to the list.
 
Now for the problem at hand, we’d like to get additional context on how Edge can better meet your global readiness expectations. What aspect(s) of Edge are displaying in an unexpected language?
  • Edge user interface (menus, toolbars, settings, developer tools, etc.) displays in an unexpected language
  • The New Tab Page, which shows news and weather, displays content in/ an unexpected language or region
  • Websites you browse are appearing in an unexpected language, and Edge doesn't offer to translate the page
  • Other
 

- The Microsoft Edge Team

32 Replies

I use Edge Release german and Edge Can german with the same language settings!

* EDGE Release
- i open it and see a german user Interface - ok
- i go to a english page ex: insider.windows.com
- i see this page with the expected language english - ok
- EDGE show a option for translate this page

* EDGE Can
- i open it and see a german user Interface - ok
- i go to a english page ex: insider.windows.com
- i see this page with the unexpected language german
- the EDGE translation function translate english pages automaticly (i see the translate animation in the addressbar)
- this is unexpected for me, i should only show the translate option (see EDGE Release)
- the autotranslate option is not set!
- also reset settings not solve the problem
- I have reported the problem several times.

 

Update:
Build Version 91.0.843.0 fix the translation bug 

Hi,

I really want an option in Edge that will block websites from detecting my browser language, it's good for privacy and to keep things manageable, sometimes I want to use a language in Edge UI but don't want websites to change with it.
also, sometimes the Web Widget in Edge as well as New Tab page, change my location for weather and news sources when I use a VPN, despite setting it manually to my correct location. happens intermittently, not always.

Hello! Yes I agree with you - should work in new edge browsing language selection function - without including location with option in settings! This is provided by the Microsoft News app - after selecting the country provided information in the language of the set region of the World ! Such a feature would be very helpful and allow you to choose according to your preferences! Thank you
For me the unexpected behaviour is from the MS Translator. I can read natively in some languages (so I have set it to never translate those), in some not at all (then I am happy enough to set it to automatically translate), but there are some languages in between: I basically read them, but I sometimes need help with more difficult texts and would like to have the option to translate.

However, currently if I choose not to translate a particular language, this hides the translate button for that language and there is no way for me to translate the page. If I don't choose this option, then every time a page in this language appears I have an annoying requester asking me if I want to translate it. Given that I live in a country when I half-speak the language, this affects 30% of my browsing.

Maybe the nice middle ground would be to only hide the translate button on when the web page language that matches the UI display language, since that's the target language in any case, and not offer a translation requester for those languages in the Preferred languages list, but still keep the button there for manual translation?

Thank you @kopoku for raising this topic, I believe it would be nice to have additional option to set to follow the Windows Settings. Let say a user add multiple languages to his/her settings in Windows and want Microsoft Edge to follow that order (or change it in the Microsoft Edge settings if want).

 

The common issue is then someone travelling or living in other country and it is not their native language. For example, consider someone who is from Ireland with English speaking is traveling or living to Germany with German language. In case he/she has no knowledge of German, the preference would be English but the problem is in case user select Ireland (English) content would show for Ireland and not Germany. In case of MSN or Microsoft Edge start page, users raise issue like they want news to support their language but country content so in case ability to retrieve data content from Germany which are in English language (e.g. local English News for Germany). This part is in hand of Microsoft and it is possible to work with Bing, MSN and correct it.

 

However, the difficult part is like when website won't support their language in the local case. For example consider you are living in Germany and you want to contact a support website of a product and it only supports German and in case you want English support, you have to visit support for other country which is not applicable. For this case, auto-translate is very helpful but I believe in the web developer standard Microsoft should raise this concern or you may use telemetry data and see if there are too many request for translate a website, inform the website owner to consider this language. 

 

Generally speaking from my experience most users would prefer to visit their websites in the language which they are able to speak.

@kopoku 

i use Edge Can Chinese with the default language settings,
but in 'dev tools', it recently show in English(just from last week,if my memories not wrong. ). version: 91.0.857.0.

like the image showed.WX20210415-093520@2x.png

@kopoku 

Any comment on this?

Shall we expect new features?

Salam.Androidlə Edgedə Azerbaijan dili yoxdur.Ona görə smartfonumda chrome-dan daxil olmağa məcburam:(
Not sure about this feature specifically but what I want is to set the language when setting up Edge and since Microsoft is a primarily US company then the default language should be set to English but can be changed when setting up Edge for the first time. You should also be able to go into settings and change the default language, have it autodetect your language, and have it work off of the windows, Mac, or Linux system settings to determine your language if you want it to.

@ethanmenzel 

 

Hello!

I agree with you!

Edge Development Planning is a feature that customizes the display language, and adapts to user preferences that is often multilingual and mobile worldwide!  

Modern Edge uses great developers, but setting planning strategies is the choice of management and priorities that they will set as the most important!  

When Edge is first installed it should pick up the default system language and prioritise that. I may be wrong but it seems the default language is English USA which tries to put the letter Z where S should be which is real annoying. I have had to manually change the language setting for Edge which I believe is unnecessary unless for some reason I want my PC to be in one language and my browser in another. I can't think of a reason why I'd want that.
I would like clear documentation how Edge interacts with Windows language settings like the ones below. I am specifically interested in their effects on the HTTP Accept-language header value.
* Order of the Windows language list
* Selected value for Input Method Override Settings/Devices/Keyboard
* Selected value for "Let websites provide locally relevant content by accessing my lanaguage list".
* Device "Region" setting - Settings/Time&Language/Region
* Selected value in "Regional format data" -Settings/Time&Language/Region

Also do these settings impact only the installer, or do they influence the language settings for each user profile?
Why did you share this link that isn't related to this Thread?

@HotCakeX 

 

Just wanted to support this: being able to switch off language recognition per site would be great. For me personally, even better would be the option to set language preferences itself on a per site basis.

 

As many Dutch users, my English is fluent, but obviously my Dutch is native. This means that I don't care that much in which language a website is shown in principle. However, I have strong per-site preferences, as often the content and quality of content is strongly affected by the language chosen. A few examples:

 

  • I usually prefer English Wikipedia articles (higher quality), unless the topic is very specifically Dutch (in which case the Dutch article is probably better).
  • When browsing websites of Dutch organizations / media etc., I prefer the Dutch page (as it is usually the better written and more up-to-date version of the site).
  • If I read technical websites (e.g. programming documentation etc.), I always prefer the English page, as English is the default language for all terminology and literal text like error messages. Translated pages are highly confusing.
  • I am constantly struggling with search engine "localization", search engines still can't deal with a simple preference of getting the highest quality content regardless of language. Duckduckgo has a helpful feature: a switch button to turn on or off "localization"

As a result, I find myself constantly searching for language settings (or links to regional pages) on websites. Often there is a small link somewhere at the bottom of the page, sometimes I have to create a site-account and go through some "settings" page to set a prefered language: all quite messy. I assume that this is a problem that many multi-linguists (particularly those who are fluent in English) run into.

 

It would be absolutely fantastic if there was a consistent  and simple way to set the language in which a page appears within the browser UI. I guess a button to set browser language-preference per site, e.g. within the current Translation UI, would be very, very helpful.

I used my laptop while I was on holiday in Portugal and since then, my Microsoft Edge new tab page always comes up in Portuguese, with content relevant to that country. I've checked the language settings, which are for UK English and my searches come through in English. I can't see an option to change the home page (and clearly lack the tech knowledge to have intentionally changed it in the first place). Any help would be gratefully received

@SarahWilliams 

Hello 

At the top right is the gear ( settings ) click > advanced > expand > there you can choose the language and content , this setting has nothing to do with the system settings - this applies only to this site. 

Thanks so much - all of the controls had changed to Portuguese as well, but I used translator to follow through your advice @A1