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0 pointscsmantle6mo ago0 comments

I sometimes shop on Japanese webstores for CDs and merch. Many of these sites are actually where natives buy stuff, so few to no translations are available there. It's a routine for me to copy the Japanese on the nav bar to a translator, then get a list like "Cart <tab> Orders <tab> Account <tab> Help".

Another example for buttons. Assuming I don't speak Chinese, how could I know what "下单" and "返回" mean without copy-pasting them into a translator?

0 comments

underlipton6mo ago

Copy-paste obviously makes things easier, but it should be noted that many translate tools let you draw characters these days, and many OCR services can read Chinese characters. But I agree that those are annoying extra steps.

sib6mo ago

Not to be argumentative, but the chance of my correctly drawing "下单" and "返回" - especially using my finger on a phone screen - rounds to 0.

underlipton6mo ago

It's definitely not the easiest thing, but I imagine that someone working with Chinese characters often would have learned enough about radicals and stroke order to do it in a pinch. The hardest part is memorizing the characters; the OCR in, say, Google Translate, is quite good at picking out what you meant.

1 more reply

ZYbCRq22HbJ2y76mo ago

I think a way to resolve things like this is to have media features.

For example:

  @media(prefers-user-select: all){ * {user-select: all;} }

But that wouldn't guarantee you could select text on an interactive element, plenty of other things could prevent it.

If it was an established known issue, then maybe people would do something like:

   :not(:lang('base-lang')) { * {user-select: all;}  }

It looks like there are plenty of extensions for this:

- https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/user-select-all/aoh...

- https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/enable-user-select/...

- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/select-like-a...

- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/user-select/

csmantleOP6mo ago

Yeah that's possible for us geeks ;) But UX talks about how everyone interacts with our site. We couldn't just ask all visitors to be experts.

ZYbCRq22HbJ2y76mo ago

> But UX talks about how everyone interacts

It doesn't. It should, in an ideal world, but it definitely isn't the goal of people who design human-computer interfaces to allow everyone who interacts with a computer to be happy with the way it functions.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

underlipton6mo ago

sib6mo ago

Not to be argumentative, but the chance of my correctly drawing "下单" and "返回" - especially using my finger on a phone screen - rounds to 0.

underlipton6mo ago

1 more reply

ZYbCRq22HbJ2y76mo ago

I think a way to resolve things like this is to have media features.

For example:

  @media(prefers-user-select: all){ * {user-select: all;} }

But that wouldn't guarantee you could select text on an interactive element, plenty of other things could prevent it.

If it was an established known issue, then maybe people would do something like:

   :not(:lang('base-lang')) { * {user-select: all;}  }

It looks like there are plenty of extensions for this:

- https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/user-select-all/aoh...

- https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/enable-user-select/...

- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/select-like-a...

- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/user-select/

csmantleOP6mo ago

Yeah that's possible for us geeks ;) But UX talks about how everyone interacts with our site. We couldn't just ask all visitors to be experts.

ZYbCRq22HbJ2y76mo ago

> But UX talks about how everyone interacts

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse