Inaturalist French version : feature request : language specification in the url

General
1

If I want to send a link to an Inaturalist page in French, to recipients of France who don’t have an account, I have to to use the following work around:

  1. Change Inaturalist.org into Inaturalist.ca (using the Canadian site).
  2. Tell the recipients to click on ‘Français’ on the Français/English toggle button.

Wouldn’t it be easier to have a tag/value language specification in the url (e.g., lang=french), so the page appears immediately in French.
Thanks.
PS: If there is such a feature, I am not aware of it.

2

you can do this in some cases by using a combination of the locale and preferred_place_id parameters in the URL. for example, this observation page will show up in your default language:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/121737257

… but this will force it to French:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/121737257?locale=fr

… and this forces it to Russian:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/121737257?locale=ru

4 Likes
3

Which pages are you sharing with them?

4

tywane,
Scenario:
I don’t log in at any time.
I run the link https://www.inaturalist.org/?locale=fr (the resulting page is in French - good)
I select ‘Explorer’ (the resulting page and all subsequent pages are no longer in French).

Conclusion :
The specification ‘locale=fr’ in the URL is not preserved though the whole Inaturalist session.
It seems to me that, without a log in, you cannot do Explore in French. A work around is to go through the .ca site, which is not intuitive to people living in France.

5

you could make a feature request asking that the website use the web browser’s default language if the user is not logged in. this should be possible to handle this either on the client side or on the server side, though i’m not sure how much work that would involve.

6

You can change the language in the footer even if you are not logged in:

image
image1472×874 265 KB

This should stay through the whole session.

iNaturalist already attempts to use your browser’s language – I just changed my browser to French and can confirm that iNat changed to French. If someone is running their browser in French and not seeing iNat in French, that is something that could be investigated.

3 Likes
7

ah, you’re right. that does make me curious about the specific situation described in this thread. i would assume the original poster’s French link recipients would be using a browser with French set as the default language, and that would, in turn, cause the site to automatically display French by default.

1 Like
8

Yes, iNat tries to use your browser’s language setting. That’s why I’m curious as to which URLs the OP is sharing with their friends.

I’ll also note that iNatCA has this option in the header:

image
image750×162 4.04 KB

@h100 is this what you’re referring to by “Tell the recipients to click on ‘Français’ on the Français/English toggle button.”

Specific URLs and screenshots of what you’re referring to will help us understand the issue better.

9

  • Thanks, I hadn’t noticed the language choice on the footer, even if you are not logged in. This resolves my problem.

  • Yes, tiwane, the Français/English toggle button in Inat.ca is (of your picture) what I was referring to.

  • The only issue (maybe), is : ‘locale=fr’ in the URL does not apply to the whole session.

If you need screenshots of anything, let me know.

Thanks all, from France, now.

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