Stuck behind a cow in Swedish cyberspace
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Just to make a point about the boundless possibilities of technology, I thought I would publish a Language Log post from a train. I am writing while traveling south by rail from Edinburgh to York. However, I have to admit that the boundless possibilities of technology are being resisted every step of the way by the forces of darkness and entropy. An hour out of Edinburgh we slowed to a crawl because of farm animals on the line. A modern express train can do nothing in the face of an imperturbable heifer, apparently. One minute it was rattle-a-dat, rattle-a-dat, at about ninety miles an hour, and the next minute we were stationary at a herd of cattle like a taxi in rural India. And the other thing is that through some strange interaction of default configurations with the National Express East Coast free wi-fi software, when train passengers call for the Google front page they get the one in Swedish. I am on a train in England looking at Google Sverige, which has buttons labeled Google-sökning and Jag har tur. As a qualified linguist, it shouldn't faze me to use Swedish for once (heck, I once executed an ATM transaction in Hmoob). But I am bit intrigued. I wonder what unintended consequence of what variable setting in which file was responsible for this whole train acting as if it were stuck behind a Swedish cow in Swedish cyberspace.
[People have of course been emailing me to observe that quite probably National Express East Coast accepted a bid from a Swedish ISP to run its wi-fi network, so the signals into Google are showing the IP address of a Swedish server. I agree, that is very probably the reason. In fact Martin Hardcastle says: "I noticed this on a similar train a couple of days ago. Seems that National Express is using a Swedish satellite broadband provider (http://www.ses-sirius.com/english/) to connect its trains to the
internet. Your internet traffic really does arrive at Google via Sweden, with a Swedish IP address, so Google is only doing its job." It still seems to me that someone should have noticed this and put in a fix. On the off chance that this is noticed by someone working for Google Sweden, or National Express, or the ISP in question, I will comments below. But please don't tell me your train was also stopped behind a cow for a while near Scunthorpe. I know, it happens to all of us.]
Nick Lamb said,
June 15, 2008 @ 1:40 pm
The web is supposed to allow individual users to decide what languages they can understand (even in order of preference), tell their web browser and then have web sites present responses accordingly. This is the "Accept-Language:" content negotiation mechanism specified in HTTP, a standard now for well over a decade.
This falls down in a variety of ways, due to the usual collection of human failings, e.g.
• Users can't be bothered to actually configure such things, so they leave them set however they came when they bought the computer.
• Microsoft makes it cheaper and often either necessary or more convenient for those who can manage in English to buy US English copies of Windows, even if their preferred language isn't English, sometimes this English copy of Windows can then be retro-fitted to speak some other language, although it stubbornly believes the user understands only US English.
The result of just this first pair of failings is that many French, Germans, Spaniards etc. have a web browser which sends to every web site a message announcing that the first and only language comprehensible to its user is US English. Once web designers realised this, they mostly gave up on trying to use the content negotiation feature.
Stephen Jones said,
June 16, 2008 @ 3:10 am
—-"It still seems to me that someone should have noticed this and put in a fix."——
There isn't a fix. The ISP is assigned a list of IP addresses and Google chooses which site to initially show based on that. Each individual user can override that setting for his own computer (I never get Saudi or Indian Google any more) but the only thing Google could do is turn the feature off. And of course it's nothing to do with Google Sweden.
Jonathan Lundell said,
June 16, 2008 @ 12:11 pm
National Express uses a Swedish service for their wifi, and it appears that rural connections are made via satellite–I'm assuming via Göteborg, their home. I'd guess that it's fixable, one way or another.
Google has this to say on the subject:
http://www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=873
(Me, Scunthorpe no, but Williams Arizona yes.)
Neal Whitman said,
June 16, 2008 @ 6:33 pm
Interesting use of a multiple-wh question looking for a single-pair answer, with one D-linked wh-phrase (which file), one possibly D-linked wh-phrase (what variable setting) and one non-D-linked wh-phrase (what unintended consequence).
Gemma said,
June 22, 2008 @ 12:07 pm
I was also recently on an Scotland to London National Express train. It had free WiFi.
What it didn't have was power outlets/plug sockets.
Since I was on the train for over five hours I had plenty of time to brood over this piece of illogic once my laptop batteries were dead.
Gavin said,
June 29, 2008 @ 3:17 pm
It is odd isn't it?! I am on a train from Edinburgh to London at the minute and failing miserably to connect to Radio 5 Live, to listen to the EURO 2008 final as the BBC also seem to think i am in Sweden!! I think National Express's plan could have been thought out a tad better…
Pete said,
October 27, 2008 @ 2:35 pm
I too am on a train, but unlike you… I'm not a linguist! Thanks for explaining why Google is in Swedish!