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I have an annoying problem. I live in a foreign country. Every time I visit a new website, it set the foreign language as default.

Is it possible to set some settings or any preference or any special header (using a Chrome extension) that can request English as default language on those sites.

It doesn't have to be full proof and work on every site but if it works on popular site, it will be awesome.

My goal is to set it once, and then it should work on all supported website.

  • It would be useful if you'll supply some example website – arieljannai Apr 22 '18 at 17:13
  • @arieljannai Google, facebook (among the most common) –  Apr 22 '18 at 20:19
  • I've the same problem! My company has a proxy in Poland, visiting sites like Microsoft or HP often wrongly identifies might location and show me Polish content which I don't understand at all. – Máté Juhász Apr 23 '18 at 05:12
  • One solution I found was to rewrite url using chrome extension. It works for many sites. So if you live in Germany, you can do like `/de/` with `/en/` and `/de-de/` to `/en-us/` –  Apr 23 '18 at 09:05

2 Answers2

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There is no universal solution, but two common partial solutions.

Your browser sends an Accept-Language: header which indicates your language preference. This should be configurable in your brower's preferences. Here is a link to the W3C's guideline for how to do this in many popular browsers: https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-lang-priorities and here I excerpt their instruction for current versions of Chrome:

Open Language and Input Settings and add the language or language+region choice you want from the list available. Order the resulting list so that it is in descending order of preference. You don't need to restart Chrome.

However, some sites annoyingly ignore or override your Accept-Language: preference e.g. based on your apparent geographic location. As a possible remedy, you can use an anonymizing VPN; some are free, and some allow you to set which geographic region you would like to appear to be in (though many are either non-free, or lack this facility).

However, perhaps also note that some sites also serve different content based on geolocation; so they might show you offers which are not valid in your region, or fail to show you offers which you would be eligible for if they were able to figure out where you are.

tripleee
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  • Printer manufacturers and Swedish companies in particular seem to be hellbent on refusing to serve you the content you want in the language you prefer. But perhaps my sampling is biased. – tripleee Apr 23 '18 at 05:52
  • Even damn facebook ignore "Accept-Language" header –  Apr 23 '18 at 09:04
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    Actually, Facebook *in particular* can be expected to be more annoying than other sites, and to gratuitously ignore standards, conventions, interoperability, and user preferences. I hear there's a discussion about their ethics, too. – tripleee Apr 23 '18 at 09:26
  • But more generally, sites which try to get you to register and log in before you get to view content or otherwise interact meaningfully with them may well decide to willfully ignore the preferenoes of anonymous visitors as yet another nudge to get you to give up your anonymity. – tripleee Apr 23 '18 at 09:30
  • Right. I was a bit taken aback when you wrote *"even* Facebook" but apparently you were not actually singling them out as likely to care. – tripleee Apr 23 '18 at 13:07
  • This sounds like it should be the solution. In my experience there is hardly any site though that actually does anything with this header. "some" can better be replaced with "most" I think. Maybe it would be nice to include a list of some popular sites that do use it to show that this solution does work for some things. – Kvothe Aug 31 '18 at 17:42
  • Apache and I believe Nginx and many CMSes do exactly the right thing out of the box, so it should not be hard to find examples of sites which work correctly, though they're likely to be smaller and older sites. I guess the root problem is that many browser users don't set their preferred language at all, and so golocation-based heuristics are in some sense better than "one size fits all". – tripleee Sep 01 '18 at 07:58
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Websites typically use the geolocation of the user's IP address or browser settings to determine the appropriate language for displaying content. While some websites offer language preferences that users can choose, it's not advisable to manipulate these settings artificially.

If you prefer to view a website in English while in a non-English speaking country, there are legitimate ways to do so:

Change Browser Settings: Most modern web browsers allow you to change your preferred language settings. By setting English as your preferred language, some websites that support multilingual content will automatically display content in English.

Use a VPN: A Virtual Private Network (VPN) can route your internet connection through a server in a different country, effectively making it appear as if you're accessing the internet from that country. If you connect to a VPN server located in an English-speaking country, some websites might display content in English.

Language Preferences on Websites: Some websites offer language options on their homepage or in their settings. Look for language selection buttons or menus that allow you to choose English.

Use English Version URLs: Some websites have separate URLs for different languages. For example, the English version might be "example.com/en/" while the local language version might be "example.com/es/". By using the English version URL, you can access the English content directly.

Nancy thomas
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