Online language

Earlier today, I helped a non-tech savvy friend create and publish a Facebook-page, as he was running for board membership on his school in Norway. As I’m currently in Denmark, the instructions had to be given over the phone while sitting in front of our respective computers.

The problem that occurred was that his Facebook language was set to Norwegian. One could say that this is the natural choice, and most non-native English speakers probably runs their OS, Facebook, e-mail client etc. in their own language if available.  

When I tried to explain to my friend where he should navigate, it took us at least 5 minutes extra because everything had to be to be translated from English to Norwegian. Today’s incident wasn’t a particular big one, but I’m writing this on general basis. The advantages of having an OS, software and websites all running in English are numerous:

• You improve your skills in a foreign language (That’s part of the reason why I’m writing in English as well)
• It’s easier to troubleshoot computer problems. (Imagine if W7 gives you an error message. If you Google the original (in this case Norwegian) error message, you have at most 5 million peers posting about the same error. Post an original English error message, and the amount of peers that might have had the same problem multiplies by a factor of at least 62. (That’s only native speakers)
• Problems like mine today can be avoided.

And this list goes on. I can’t utilize many foursquare-tips if I’m in a foreign country where I don’t speak the language (I’m aware of the possibilities with Google translate, but I prefer human translations any day – even really bad ones). I’m a big advocate of one mutual internet language, as it makes it easier for everyone to connect online.

I don’t think any of my Norwegian friends really needs their computer language set to Norwegian, I believe it’s carelessness. If you read this (and agree), please help spread the word – the English word.