Remix clone Hacker News

new | show | ask | jobs Github

▲

dgfitz 8 hours ago

In this specific case, it seems like your concerns are a hypothetical, no?

▲

swiftcoder 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Not really, no. A lot of us only really have to deal with English-adjacent input (i.e. European languages that share the majority of character forms with English, or cultures that explicitly Anglicise their names when dealing with English folks).

As soon as you have to deal with users with a radically different alphabet/input-method, the wheels tend to come off. Can your CSR reps pronounce names written in Chinese logographs? In Arabic script? In the Hebrew alphabet?

▲

cowsandmilk 7 hours ago | parent [-]

You can analyze the name and direct a case to a CSR who can handle it. May be unrealistic for a 1-2 person company, but every 20+ person company I’ve worked at has intentionally hired CSRs with different language abilities.

	▲	Muromec 6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		First of, no you can't infer language preference from a name. The reasonable and well meaning assumption about my name on a good day makes me only sad and irritated. And even if you could, I don't know if you actually do it by looking at what you signup form asks me to input.
	▲	michaelt 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		A requirement to do that is an extremely broad definition of "treat strings as opaque blobs most of the time" IMHO :)