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0 pointsanyfoo4y ago0 comments

As someone who grew up multilingually in Europe but now lives in the US and works for a US company (which seems to get localization right), I have the impression you don't really know the confusion and difficulties that arise from what you are saying.

To explain, let's turn it around. Assuming you also live in the US, imagine a EU company would make the following assumptions that are common (to the point of feeling entirely "natural") in lots of European countries, but wrong in the US, and think about how that could impede you in varying business situations:

* There is only one time zone in a given country.

* VAT and other sales taxes are the same over the whole country (and therefore just included in the display price).

* Every debit card, credit card etc. has a PIN, and a common API to the bank for card/bank-specific verification.

* Every bank account is identified by IBAN, even across countries. Wiring money is always free.

* Decimal separator is universally "," and grouping is ".". (Bonus: Let's instead be in an Asian country where it's common to group digits by 4 instead of 3.)

* Dates are always either in order "DD MM YYYY" or ISO YYYY-MM-DD. In the case the year is omitted, "DD MM" is assumed and no clarification is ever made. Your appointment is 4.5., thanks for doing business with us! Sincerely yours, noreply@example.com.

* Car-related business: You have to be at least 18 to drive a car (and have spent the equivalent of thousands of dollars and many hours of mandatory theoretical and practical training). It is illegal to drive a car more than 2 years without a thorough inspection that forces you to fix even minor things (Autobahn speeds are dangerous), so old cars are uncommon. There are special enthusiast registrations for so called "oldtimers", but that still requires extra maintenance.

* Gastronomy-related: But you're allowed to drink beer at 16 (was at least the case when I was that age), anything else 18.

* You have to use/publish your real name, address, and other information mandatorily in a lot more situations (e.g. when hosting a website of any kind--imagine a business enforcing that for all customers).

You may find that if you want to do business internationally at all, you have to start caring about those things.

0 comments

brightball4y ago

I’m very familiar with it after working for a company which does a tremendous amount of business in Europe. Our European office, based in the Netherlands, just wanted to use some Google translate proxy service rather than properly internationalize anything.

If anything, I cared a lot more about getting it right than anyone else but it is a lot of work.

My point is that with all of the work a company has to put in to even make a proper language choice available, complaining about flags is literally just finding a reason to be bothered.

It’s like somebody built you a house just how you wanted it, but you latched onto the color of the front door to complain.

So yes, 100%…if flags make your site look better just use flags and ignore the noise. If you want to do it a different way, do that. You’re investing the time to get it right, you don’t have time to deal with petty complaints about the selection box.