[SOLVED] Bi-Lingual Google Earth :(

I'm doing some work here on maps of what was the oldest part of Dublin city, but now has been built over into Apartment blocks mainly.

My problem is that the street names. Now we speak English, but the folks here formerly spoke Irish. Irish or Gaeilge is on life support with diehard enthusiasts and Google apparently busy keeping it alive. I had to learn it in school, because if I failed Irish, I failed my whole Leaving exam. But it was a case of Knowledge Bulimia - learn it for the test, then forget it. I sat the test in 1970.

Now in Google Earth, I'm getting 'the Coombe' (English) linking on to 'Sráid an Déin (Irish = Dean Street). Bordering The Coombe are all Irish names, 'Scabhat-Mharcuis-Thiar,' 'Sráid Na bhFiodóiri,' etc. What's even worse is that this city spoke English since the Middle Ages, because the English who were here mainly lived here. So all the Dublin Street names are anglicized names from Norse, Gaelic, & various languages being translated back into Irish with varying degrees of success. Suffice it to say, it sucks having to wrestle with these.

I'm using among other things Google Earth Pro version 7.3.0.3832 (Slackbuild) on the Slackware-Current iso of April 2021. Google's help says to change the language in X. I have no Irish in X - just an Irish keyboard.

Technically, I've no experience with google earth. But if I understood this right, I suspect you can't really fix this locally.
Got similar problems with the entire google software catalog, I think it's because they localize basically everything based on IP address.
What annoys the most is that whenever I use their services directly I always have to translate their output back to en_US, in my head.
I can only suggest a proxy or some sort of vpn, it's the only thing that worked for me, if your proxy is in the US they usually don't translate anything.

Setting LANG to ga_IE.utf8 should do the trick.

Originally Posted by Didier Spaier Setting LANG to ga_IE.utf8 should do the trick.

That's the LAST thing I want. The absolute last, if I didn't make that clear. I want English. $LANG is set to en_IE. Gaelic is a dead Language.

Originally Posted by elcore Technically, I've no experience with google earth. But if I understood this right, I suspect you can't really fix this locally. Got similar problems with the entire google software catalog, I think it's because they localize basically everything based on IP address. What annoys the most is that whenever I use their services directly I always have to translate their output back to en_US, in my head. I can only suggest a proxy or some sort of vpn, it's the only thing that worked for me, if your proxy is in the US they usually don't translate anything.

Localise everything on IP? How do they manage in places like Nigeria, where there's scores of official languages, and perhaps 10,000 spoken languages. I once knew an African fluent in 9 local tribal languages, and learning a tenth - English.

I get your drift. There's no language controls in Google Earth. GE obviously doesn't use $LANG.

Originally Posted by business_kid Localise everything on IP? How do they manage in places like Nigeria...

No idea, never been there, I'm in some (intentionally) unspecifed place on mainland EU.
Over here, google has some local branch office, where a bunch of unqualified employed-by-connection people decide what's best for everyone else in the country.
Exact same as microsoft, never really had a personal issue with their US company but their branch over here is beyond corrupt, I've cut ties with them long ago.
It doesn't matter to them if you know how everything was written originally, if you don't know the localized version you're generally beneath them.
It's just a bunch of rich local people discriminating others based on language preference, I was told once by MS tech I'm worthless to them since I know nothing of localized software.
Since I've had the misfortune of using the net before any of that existed, back when everything was ASCII, I've had a real hard time bending to their localized set of rules and standards.
TBH, there's no real way around it, except moving to US, having a VPS in US, or using some random public proxy for those types of services.

Originally Posted by elcore Since I've had the misfortune of using the net before any of that existed, back when everything was ASCII, I've had a real hard time bending to their localized set of rules and standards.

Just noticed this now How far back? 300/300 baud modems & unix? My first modem was 2400 baud on CP/M, but I couldn't afford a pc then, as they were crazy money for what you got. I had an Amstrad 6128 which played games (important) and, of lesser importance, I got a 180k floppy with Spreadsheet, editor, database, comms & fax as separate programs running in a lightly loaded 64k or ram.

Anyhow, On GE, I tried all keyboard variants including an English one and still get irish names for side streets. I don't care enough to try doing more. I'd love to say I was bothered, but I'm not.

Originally Posted by business_kid Just noticed this now How far back?

Dialup 56k "Net" but the thing is I don't remember much about the hardware since back then I was 12 years old or something.
What I do remember, web was mostly Yahoo over Netscape Navigator or IE, and comms were just IRC (ICQ came a few years after that).
It's probably google that made things "easier" for general population, but because of my old habits it just made obstacles for me.
So I've tried to avoid it, I don't think anything good will ever come out of advertisement company either way.

Originally Posted by business_kid I tried all keyboard variants including an English one and still get irish names for side streets. I don't care enough to try doing more. I'd love to say I was bothered, but I'm not.

It'd be great if it were that easy.
But since you're giving up, you may as well mark it solved cause the bug here is really an intentionally missing feature on their side of the line.
They just assume language preference for whatever reason. So I guess without extensive knowledge of their internal networking, you won't be able to fix it.
It occured to me you could maybe redirect all your requests to google servers located in another country, but this is probably not what you want.
It's sometimes called a "BGP hijack" but in reality, it's just a way to force the use of server you prefer over the one designated to you.

Thanks.. I''m not bothered to try a BGP Hijack, whatever that is. I'd have clicked a mouse in X if that could be done, or rejigged something.

It used to be that Google paid attention to the localization settings in the browser. Edit->Preferences->General->Language

As far as I know that broke more than a decade ago and has stayed broken. I complained at the time, as I had a contact, and they fixed it. However, it broke again a few days later and has stayed broken since then. It sometimes works for some things, albeit less and less often for fewer and fewer services.

So a long shot might be to add in several extra languages into your browser's list so that it no longer has the default language profile, then shuffle English to the top of the list.

Google Earth is not in the browser, right?

No it's the binary from the Slackbuild, 7.3.0.3832 on X86_64. It would probably be better in the browser.

/tries the browser

I tried the browser, and it's worse. I'd have to spend time learning that interface and bending it straight.