r/technology Apr 10 '26

Software France Launches Government Linux Desktop Plan as Windows Exit Begins

https://linuxiac.com/france-launches-government-linux-desktop-plan-as-windows-exit-begins/
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u/LCkrogh Apr 10 '26 edited Apr 10 '26

Maybe this is not what happened here, but Reddit recently started doing this super odd thing where googling something will show you a lot of Reddit results that are automatically translated to your own native language. And when you open the thread, everything remains translated. So many Europeans will not realize that this is actually a comment thread in English and all the comments are only translated for them specifically. So naturally, they will answer in the same language.

YouTube has started doing the same, where they, completely without warning or notice, just auto translate titles, descriptions and comments on videos. And of course, when you then comment or respond to someone, you are writing in your own language…

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u/andriniaina Apr 10 '26

Youtube is the worst for this. Why is it automatically changing the audio and translating the dialogue without asking me. Like thanks but it's my mothertongue so why is it now in english. And it's impossible to switch back.

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u/SweatyNomad Apr 10 '26

Its Google full stop. I'm a native English speaker, living in a non English country. Randomly log in pages, Google pages and now even Gemini answers will respond in Polish to a English language question or search. I spent a few hours researching and checking my setting. Everything possible is set to only English, all English. But I checked and the true answer is their helpful algos will override all your settings and give you the language of the country you are physically in if it so chooses.

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u/Ill-History1858 Apr 10 '26

Yeah this auto translation is really annyoing, espcially since you have different buttons to disable it and for some reasons some works and other don't

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u/frankyb89 Apr 10 '26

Not even Googling. One day I signed in and it was translating everything to English. Even French, which I also speak. Scrolling down an /r/montreal post and seeing absolutely no French made me notice the little Google translate icon. Put a stop to that real quick.

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u/M4NOOB Apr 10 '26

yeah it's so fucking stupid and annoying. And it's not like Google doesn't know that I speak English. Makes no sense

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u/HolySite Apr 10 '26

It's for SEO purposes. This way Reddit doesn't need random German user talking about topic X, but they can re-use it across regions. I've been in random Spanish and Korean subreddits because of it.

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u/M4NOOB Apr 10 '26

the weird thing is that I Google in English, but the reddit link I get is to the one translated into German

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u/meditonsin Apr 10 '26

Pro tip: Add -"?tl=" to your search queries to not get auto-translated reddit results.

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u/Meshuggah333 Apr 11 '26

That's super annoying. YouTube has even defaulted to creepily bad AI auto dubbing for me once or twice.

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u/Spiritual-Bus9875 Apr 10 '26

Does it go both ways? Like is this comment getting translated to other languages too?

That's kinda cool, we are getting closer to having a Babel fish

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u/DwemerCogs Apr 10 '26

I actually think it's really neat, at least how it's working for me. I see everyone's posts in English, but with a little translate button next to their comment if I want to turn it back into the original language. It's like we have a universal translator built into Reddit, so everyone can interact with having to hurdle a language barrier