Hey gang,

I am pretty sure this has nothing to do with Ubuntu, but just in case, I thought I would first try posting here for potential solutions.

I hope I am not being RTFM dumb here, but whenever I go to some pages, like blogger, they render the page in Thai(script) without any button (that I can find) to choose English instead. I am sure the blogger page is only trying to be proactive rendering its pages based on ip addy location, but it is getting to be a royal PITA. Does anyone know how to prevent this from happening while surfing with a Thai IP addy?

I generally use FFox browser, which I have ensured the language defaults are English and English, without Thai even being listed, so I do not think this is a browser issue. To be sure I tried out a few other browsers and experienced the same problem. I do not have access to Winblowz to test it there, so I am not certain if it could possibly be a setting in Ubu preferences (actually Xubu, but same same, almost).

I guess a solution is what I am hoping for, but failing that I am curious if anyone else has this problem. I used to have the same problem with Google home page, but I found a URL for ppl living in non-English speaking countries to use to render the Google homepage in English. This also makes it seem like it is an internet issue and platform/browser independent.

cheers,

tt

go to control panel.look for regional or language settings,change a;; to english,then restart

go to control panel.look for regional or language settings,change a;; to english,then restart

Thanks for the quick reply. I am unsure about the "control panel.look" option, but when I go into the system (admin) tab in my xfce drop-down menu and look at the language/regional settings I do have english selected as the default language, but i also have Thai script installed as an alternate that I have mapped to a hotkey for easily switching between the two, the odd time or two a month when I need to do so.

But I cannot see that this should be the problem. It seems more likely that webpages are reading my Thai IP addy and being smart rendering pages in Thai script. It seems like Google and Blogger (Google also) are the most annoying culprits.

There is actually a webpage Google offers to deal with this problem:

http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en

That allows English speaking users to get an English version of Google when they are surfing from an IP addy recognized to be non-English, so it seems pretty clear the problem is with webservers trying to be smart. I guess Blogger (Google page I realize) has not offered up a similar type URL for its traveling English users that is making using the page a PITA here in LOS.

Oh well if anyone has any other suggestions I am open to ideas.

I know what you mean about Google and Blogger. They seem to serve a page in Thai if the IP address is in Thailand. The best workaround I have found is to be signed in to Google and check the box to stay signed in. If your settings are for English then Google will (mostly) serve the page in English and the same when you go to Blogger. Sometimes even though signed in, the pages still revert to Thai for no apparent reason.

Just did a quick search in Blogger help many complaints similar to yours about Blogger defaulting to the local language. This post "How to change language if you are an expat in a foreign country" has some useful details about setting the language preferences, but of course this only works once you are signed in to Google/Blogger.