People think, naively, that you don't need to localize icons. And yet a lot of the time icons should be localized.

Or rather:

You can design an icon that doesn't need to be localized. But unless you design for it, it very well may need to be localized.

Things like thumbs-up/down, any sort of animal icon... Even trash cans.

A "feature"?

I'd consider doing things just to make development a little easier at the expense of many users' ability to operate the UI is most certainly a bug and not a feature.