canada ยท post 03 of 7 in this channel
English and French on the WTN market interface
The interface exists in both languages. That is a straightforward consequence of who it is built for, and it has one small trap attached.
the three wethenorth market addresses
hn2paw7zfvndw3dovycegeqmvvnf4pl67b3g2p7pohjlzavloosh73id.onionhn2paw7zrgujyhnt6mgxlt2q6uhgbke4itpqitxhyfbumq3wtnckbuyd.onionhn2paw7zadwkcra3qzv5e4q547i7e5lvxm62cfxqftuqdu7moiu2ceyd.onionprinted the way they were handed over. no labels, no numbering, nothing here says which one to try first. this feed never opens them, so it has no status light, no percentage and no date of checking to give you.
why it is bilingual
A market aiming at one country has to work for the people in it, and Canada has two official languages. It is not a gesture, it is the minimum for the audience.
You will see it on the front page before you have an account, which is one of the few things on that page worth noticing.
what it changes for a reader
Very little, if you read one of the two comfortably. Interface labels, notices and some vendor listings appear in the language they were written in.
Listings are written by vendors, so a bilingual market does not mean every listing is bilingual. Some are in one language only, and that is a vendor choice rather than a platform one.
the trap, which is translation
If a listing or a message is in a language you do not read, the reflex is to paste it into a translation service. That sends the text to a third party, outside Tor Browser, from your ordinary connection.
A paragraph of listing text does not seem sensitive. It becomes considerably more interesting when combined with what else that service knows about your session.
And messages are worse, because a message contains the specifics of your order.
what to do instead
Ask the vendor, in the language you have, whether they can answer in it. That is a normal request on a bilingual market and it costs nothing.
Or use a translation tool that runs entirely on your own machine, if you have one. The distinction is whether the text leaves your computer.
Or skip the listing. There is no obligation to buy from someone you cannot read, and buying something you did not fully understand is its own kind of mistake.
the small honest benefit
A bilingual interface is a mild signal that the market took its stated audience seriously enough to do the work. Translation is tedious and nobody does it decoratively.
That is a comment about effort, in the same family as the vanity prefix in the shared prefix. Effort is not honesty, and it is not nothing either.
what it does not indicate
Anything about security, vendor quality or whether an address is genuine. A translated interface is a translated interface.
This is the same boundary the whole channel keeps drawing, and it is drawn most carefully in what it does not mean.
It is easy to read polish as trustworthiness, and a properly translated interface reads as polished. That reaction is worth noticing and then setting aside, because it is about presentation rather than about anything you can check.
The check that matters happened before the page loaded, at the address, and no amount of interface quality can substitute for it.
replies
a reader askedAre all listings available in both languages?
the answerNo. Vendors write their own listings and many write in one language only. The interface being bilingual and the content being bilingual are different things.
a reader askedIs it safe to use a translation site for a listing?
the answerIt sends the text to a third party from your normal connection. For listing text that is a small thing, for message text it is not, and the habit does not distinguish between them.
a reader askedDoes the French interface look different?
the answerIt is the same market with different labels. There is nothing behind one language that is not behind the other.
what this post is not Not a language guide and not a recommendation of any translation tool. It names the risk and stops there.