Google webmaster and other Google product interface language

There is something that is driving me nuts about Google webmaster? It's that i can not change the interface language to English. No really, I’ve tried like a zillion times, but somehow I just can’t figure it out.

In Google products I always set English as my default language. I’ve even set that I live in U.K. so that Google do not dare to offer me Latvian. But somehow webmaster is different. It knows me. It knows me deep inside. It even scares me ;D.

The reason why I prefer English over Latvian is pretty simple though – when the specific words are being translated into Latvian, in most cases text become unreadable, and I constantly need to think – now what's that word would be in English.

Some examples include:

  • Noildze – delay;
  • Rādītājs - index;
  • Iesūtne - inbox;
  • Rāpuļprogramma - crawler;

Not only words are confusing, but in many cases translation is ambiguous too. It can easily be seen, that translator did not take context into account. And today I was exceptionally upset, because I wanted to see, why my site is not included in radītājs, even though rāpuļprogramma, was able to access my site.

So i clicked on help, and this is what i got:

“Sorry, no translation is available on your language, please view this English help page instead.”

And this English help page says “Please press settings, and than press manage my sites”. Well, I really would like to press Settings and Manage my sites, BUT I DON’T HAVE THEM. Instead I have “Iestatījumi” and “Vieņu pārvaldnieks”. When help got more complicated I decided to give up. Better luck some other day. Well basically I stopped problem solving because I know that angry people are less capable of reasoning.

PS: I always listen to positive music & think positive thoughts when working ;D

Nevertheless I must admit, that I love Google technologies. For example Google recently has announced a new GoogleMap API for flash with 3D support. So I instantly started to work with it – and it turns out to be very simple, yet powerful. Check this simple example. I created it when experimented on how to use these new maps in our new project Apūtas komplekss Dridži.

Check out 3D map here

Comments

Anonymous said…
One other reason why it is better to write in Eglish is that Your text understand friends who are living in other countries and are not speaking in Latvian, such as France, Spain, Britain and other nation.
29 Nov 2010, 12:01:00
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