Birth Country always showing up in Spanish

Discussions about the Leader and Clerk Resources on lds.org.
B_Seegmiller
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Re: Birth Country always showing up in Spanish

#11

Post by B_Seegmiller »

Ah.

Online support said to delete cookies and clear cache. Didn't work, no further response so far.
B_Seegmiller
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Re: Birth Country always showing up in Spanish

#12

Post by B_Seegmiller »

I spoke with LUS after the previous, but I guess this oddball thing is really low on the totem pole. A couple of months later (now), and all members' birth country are still showing up in Spanish.

----------------
BIRTHPLACE
Bountiful, Davis, Utah
BIRTH COUNTRY
Estados Unidos de América
MISSION COUNTRY AND LANGUAGE
Estados Unidos de América, Inglés
mevans
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Re: Birth Country always showing up in Spanish

#13

Post by mevans »

I agree this is strange. lds.org has a strange habit of showing up in Spanish sometimes, but it's odd that just some of the information you see is in Spanish and the rest is in English.

Have you tried changing your lds.org language to non-English and non-Spanish and see if the country and mission are still in Spanish or if they've changed to your new language?

I just looked at a few membership records and tried changing my lds.org languages. What I found is that the birth country and mission country/language remained in English for me while other labels changed. I even looked at individuals who were born out of the USA and their information was in English (although they have been here since before records were getting computerized the way we have it now). I also looked at individuals who used to be in a non-English speaking ward. I saw their information in English.

All I can think is that these fields are somehow special and aren't translated with the web site language. Maybe there's another setting somewhere that's causing that information to be translated.
B_Seegmiller
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Re: Birth Country always showing up in Spanish

#14

Post by B_Seegmiller »

This is really odd. I've been a software professional for over 30 years. I can understand that crashes in the mobile device software might have priority over things things like this.

Changing the language preference to French displays everything in French, except the country of birth and mission/language pair, same as in English. I'd have to find a place that has a different name in French than in English for the birthplace to see if it's trying to put the birthplace in Spanish or the selected language. Very strange that it appears to be hard-coded in some fashion.

LIEU DE NAISSANCE
Bountiful, Davis, Utah
PAYS DE NAISSANCE
Estados Unidos de América
PAYS ET LANGUE DE LA MISSION
Estados Unidos de América, Inglés

After changing the page language back to English, it's still in Spanish. I'd try Russian or Chinese, so the alphabets should certainly change. And they do, somewhat:

Russian:
МЕСТО РОЖДЕНИЯ
Bountiful, Davis, Utah
СТРАНА РОЖДЕНИЯ
Estados Unidos de América
СТРАНА И ЯЗЫК МИССИИ:
Estados Unidos de América, Inglés

and Chinese:
出生地
Bountiful, Davis, Utah
出生國家
Estados Unidos de América
傳教的國家和語言
Estados Unidos de América, Inglés

I hope this would be helpful to the s/w folk.
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aebrown
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Re: Birth Country always showing up in Spanish

#15

Post by aebrown »

cheerioboy wrote:Changing the language preference to French displays everything in French, except the country of birth and mission/language pair, same as in English.
Your latest experiment is simply testing how text elements in the web application are displayed in different languages. It's not at all surprising to me that those text elements change based on the language being used to display the user interface.

But the country of birth, as well as the mission country and language, are quite different elements. This is information that comes from the membership record itself. It's entirely possible (quite likely, I would say) that the display of such information goes through an entirely different path in the code than labels in the user interface. Given your experience, it seems certain that the display of that country information is controlled by a different setting than the language setting for LDS.org.

I have two thoughts:
  • You've never mentioned what this information looks like when you examine it in MLS. My guess is that it will be in English, not Spanish. But it would be interesting to know.
  • The only other language setting I know of that is tied to you (and not to the browser language, the language selector on LDS.org, or the MLS installation) is in your LDS Account. You can go to ldsaccount.lds.org and change your preferred language. I would think that if that is set to Spanish you would have Spanish showing up more places than this, but it's worth checking out.
mevans
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Re: Birth Country always showing up in Spanish

#16

Post by mevans »

I wouldn't expect the birthplace to be translated. It seems like it would be a lot of work to maintain such translations with limited usefulness (unless the Church already maintains such a database for something like Family Search).

However, things like the country name and language would be fairly straightforward with a small set of data to maintain for the 100 languages presently supported on lds.org. Apparently there is some system for that and it thinks you speak Spanish :)
russellhltn
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Re: Birth Country always showing up in Spanish

#17

Post by russellhltn »

mevans wrote:(unless the Church already maintains such a database for something like Family Search).
Yes, they do.
Have you searched the Help Center? Try doing a Google search and adding "site:churchofjesuschrist.org/help" to the search criteria.

So we can better help you, please edit your Profile to include your general location.
B_Seegmiller
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Re: Birth Country always showing up in Spanish

#18

Post by B_Seegmiller »

I checked that -- my LDS Account settings are English. Looks like that setting controls the language of the e-mails from topics at LDS.org. As of last stake conference, our stake records indicate that it is an English-speaking stake, so I'm not sure why that would result in Spanish birthplaces for everyone in the stake. I'm wondering if something as minor as the name of the stake, which includes the name of a city in California which is a Spanish name (as many are: San Francisco, San Leandro, Santa Clara, etc.), would trigger this. Would a name like Anaheim put the birth country in German? Solvang in Danish? The mission info (which comes after the birth country in display) is also in the same wrong language. My mission language was not Spanish, and my mission country wasn't a Spanish-speaking country.
This is information that comes from the membership record itself. It's entirely possible (quite likely, I would say) that the display of such information goes through an entirely different path in the code than labels in the user interface. Given your experience, it seems certain that the display of that country information is controlled by a different setting than the language setting for LDS.org. aebrown
Then there's some kind of error deeper down if this is so.
mevans
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Re: Birth Country always showing up in Spanish

#19

Post by mevans »

Did you ever call the service center? You mentioned that online support said to delete cookies and clear the cache. Were you referring to the service center in that post? Maybe contact them again?

Too bad none of the church employees have jumped in on this thread. I think this would be a pretty interesting problem to figure out...and it's reproducible with your stake, so that's even better.
B_Seegmiller
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Re: Birth Country always showing up in Spanish

#20

Post by B_Seegmiller »

I submitted feedback last night about the page, and the volunteer responding said to clear cache, delete cookies and "other data" -- "it worked for him". (This is a repeat of the advice a couple of months ago.) This occurs not just on my computer, but the stake computer, and a brand new computer. Browsers other than Safari: IE and Chrome. :-/
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