Google Translate and Google Search are in the wrong language

Question

For some reason, most Google pages have started being displayed to me in Czech. It includes Google Translate, as well as the main search page google.com. Oddly enough Gmail is still in my native language, Danish.

My Google account language settings are set to Danish, Google chrome settings are set to Danish, with English and other languages as lower priorities (but not Czech) and my windows settings are set to Danish...but still google.com and Google Translate are in Czech. I live in the Czech Republic but for a long time, Google didn't change because of that. I am wondering if Google made some changes and that language is somehow dependent on my IP location instead of language settings?

I've tried clearing browser cache, didn't help.

Answer 1

As I'm using Chrome and are unwilling to resort to VPN or a different browser I tried searching for answers again with some better keywords and found this page https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/3333234?hl=en&ref_topic=1638123&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&oco=1

which links to the search settings page here https://www.google.com/preferences#languages which includes a section for language. Selecting english on that and clicking save appears to have done the trick. This search settings page was way too difficult to find, and google ought to concentrate the language settings to one central location rather than 3 different.

Answer 2

You are correct. goofle does geolocation on your system's IP address to determine where you are located. This is their basic method of deciding what country you are in and what language to use. That's why goofle results often come up in unwanted languages when using a VPN based in another country.

Gmail should always be displayed in your preferred language because you have set a language preference for that account, and when you are logged into a gmail server that preference is known. However, this preference does not necessarily propagate out to goofle's other services due to (among other things) EU privacy regulations.

If you are using Firefox, try turning geolocation on (if it is now off) and forcibly spoofing your location to be in Denmark. This topic was covered in another thread:

https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/147166/how-can-you-fake-geolocation-in-firefox

If you are using Chrome, your geolocation can also be spoofed:

https://www.expressvpn.com/support/troubleshooting/spoof-location-google-chrome/

Whether goofle will prefer the browser's geolocation report or its own IP geolocation is not clear. goofle shuffles things every week (as evidenced by the fact that you're asking this question) and what was correct last week is not this week or next.

Good luck and let us know what develops.

Answer 3

Try to remove any Czech traces from here:

• https://myaccount.google.com/language
• https://www.google.com/preferences#languages

and turn off GPS/geolocation if you are on a notebook or Windows 10