English speaking users of Google Notebook and Blogger face a strange problem when they access these Google services from another country like China, Thailand, Korea, Japan, Russia, etc where the native language is not English.

Google will try to determine your country location through the computer's IP address, and will automatically set the default language of these services to the official language of the country from where you have logged in.


So even if English is your preferred language in Google Account, you will see Google Notebook interface in German if you check the site from Switzerland or in Spanish if you are based in Mexico.

DI reader Wildeny is therefore not pleased because he has to constantly change the language from Chinese to English each time he logs into either Blogger or Google Notebook. He writes:

Why on earth does Google want to do that? Don't they know living in some country doesn't mean its language is his/her mother tongue? Even though it's the case, should the users have the choice to set their preferable language?

Wildeny, here's a solution for you that should override the default Google behaviour:

Default Language For Google Notebook

For unknown reasons, Google doesn't provide an easy option to switch languages in Google Notebook but you can always access the service in any of the supported languages by appending the language code (e.g. ?hl=en) to the google.com/notebook address.

If that sounds geeky, just click the language of your choice here and Google Notebook will skip checking your physical location.

English English (UK) Français Italiano Deutsch Español Русский Nederlands Türkçe Dansk Norsk Svenska suomi Português do Brasil 한국어 日本語 中文(繁體) 中文(简体) ภาษาไทย

Default Language For Google Blogger

Clear your Internet temp folder and make sure that you have enabled cookies in the web browser. Now open the webpage at blogger.com/language.g and check your preferred language. Click Save settings.

The other option, like Google Notebook, is to bookmark the blogger.com page that corresponds to your default language. Pick the right one from the following list.

English English (UK) Français Italiano Deutsch Español Русский Nederlands Türkçe Dansk Norsk Svenska suomi Português do Brasil 한국어 日本語 中文(繁體) 中文(简体) ภาษาไทย

PS: The above trick will work just fine for non-English speaking users who are in US or UK and need to translate the Blogger or Google Notebook interface from English to their native language. Just append the ?hl=[language code] to the URL.

Related: Add Translation Flags, Google Translate Code for Blogs