I was looking at the new Marklin website (MUCH better than the previous one, I must say) and just for the fun of it I wanted to see how many dealers there are here for the Marklin products.

So, I searched for "Canada" in the country menu and THERE IS NO "CANADA".

Puzzled, I look to see if, alas, we were lumped with the US list. Nope!

This did not make sense to me since the Westend Trains shop is obviously a Marklin dealer in Toronto and has a sign as big as a house that says "Marklin".

So, on a hunch, I thought to myself that maybe there is another name for Canada in German since the list of the countries is in German even though I was in the English side of the website ( ).

I was right! Our country is called "Kanada" in the list and found Westend Trains shop listed, the ONLY one in Ontario.

Now that I know we exist with the Marklin folks, I can sleep better.

Yes, there is no "Oz"
Not even a "Doz", "Boz", "Ozerland" or "Ozerich" on these drop-down menus either.

Hi!

I have seen sites where the country list had been translated from English to German - without resorting the list.
So Germany was listed as "Deutschland", but amidst all the countries with "G" where Germany would be on the list. With long lists (150+ entries) it can take some time to find it.


Back to Märklin: The only English entry in the list is "United Kingdom". "USA" works in English and German. To confuse US-Americans they could have written "Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika" - it's not fair to confuse Canadians only.
Another oddity: "Österreich" appears at the end of the list and not between "N" and "P".

Foreigners who want to visit shops in Germany during their holidays may find it confusing that "Germany" is not on the list. But "Deutschland" is the default and many will understand what this means.

Do you really believe thats excuse yourself? I find it hilarious!
If you are in an english part of a website, orientated towards english speaking customers, you think it is normal to supply the key search list in german?! roflmao!!!
I think they put their foot in it!

And I think that even before the 21st century it was never a disadvantage to be able to look over one's own little fence and accept the fact that there are different languages and cultures all over the world. One would think that the superior attitude of "we only speak English, so all the others must adapt" might meanwhile have disappeared - especially in a country like Canada where a couple of "backward" guys still dare to speak French.

Sometimes one wonders why people buy and collect the products of a German manufacturer although they are not even tolerant of such petty oversights on a web site.

I am puzzled here. I made what I thought was an innocuous comment on not finding Canada in the list and all of a sudden the discussion has turned unpleasant. Why?

Perhaps the solution is stick to manufacturers of one's country. As a result, maybe I should only buy trains from ROCO!

Ein schönes Wochenende jedermann
(Have a good weekend everyone)

But there is "Australien", which is exactly where you would find it in an English search.

And I was pleasantly surprised that when I went to the site from my Android tablet (first time since revamp), I got a request to share my location which I allowed, and up popped a map of Aus & NZ with markers showing the location of the dealers in both countries. I thought this very user-friendly.

I was also surprised to see a pointer for my home town of Wellington showing Train Technology in Newlands because the general feeling is that Philip has all but abandoned the hobby line of business and anyone trying to find them will only see signage for Advanced Television Services. So unless you know it's the same business you would be quite mystified.

There used to be a Marklin sign within the shop, I do not know if it is still there as I have not been back there for some time although we do use Philip for our TV repairs.

Cheers

Cookee

Regarding languages (and country names), I suggest to follow the example of the European Union.

Source: www.europa.eu

I think this is bad, very bad:



Per.

That's interesting, I never checked the shipping section.

I can see the problems it could cause if you were wanting to cover everybody then you need to have every country, in every language - logistically almost impossible.

In a perfect world, I would say it would be courteous and respectful to refer to a country by the name and spelling it is known as in her own language.

But... in this instance it is very simple. Märklin offer only two languages on their website (at present), Deutsche and English so it would be nice that when a visitor select English as their preferred language that the drop down list reverts to the English spelling of those countries. And the fact that they have made English an option would seem to imply that their own research may already have determined that after German, English is the next highest language used in searches. This is not to be taken as arrogance, simply that English for better or worse is becoming a de-facto on the Internet for obvious reasons.

Similarly, if they were to offer additional languages such as French, Swedish, Italian etc then you could anticipate that all countries would be named as they are known in that particular language.

Clearly Märklin do not have the budget that Toyota would have so they have to strike a compromise.

I would suggest that anyone who purchases Märklin will already know they are dealing with a German-based company and really is it too much to exercise the mind from time to time and consider alternatives?

I would like to think that most / all of us here has sufficient intelligence to work out what our own country is called in any given language, except perhaps Swahili - (probably not a big market for Märklin).

Cookee

Hi Marklineers !!

If I might add my penneth worth .......

I absolutely agree with you Adrian, but .....(read that word in the forbidden upper case letters) ..........

I feel the "correct name" is indeed what those folk call themselves (after all it is their country)

Hence on an English language website, Spain should read "España", Russia should read "Россйя" , Germany "Deutschland", Finland "Suomi", Ireland "Éire", Italy "Italia"....etc...., rather than the English-speaking peoples of the world (that's me) anglicising the words to suit themselves.

(IMHO)

Regards,

PJ

Yes, sure - given enough time and help from Wikipedia.
For Germany I just have to check "A", "D", "G", or "T". Could be "Allemagne", "Tjüschlönj", "Dútslân" or simply "Germany".
For a second round I'd have to include letters like "B", "R" and "F", maybe more, if the country is listed as "Federal Republic of Germany" or a translation thereof.

And this only work for languages using Latin alphabets. "Γερμανία" looks Greek to me.

Hi Baggio,

Two languages seemed to be practical in Canada (aka "Kanada") when I was there recently.

Regards,


PJ

Northern Ireland is not on the list. Great Britain and Gibraltar are. It seems the ISO code "GB" includes Northern Ireland. Maybe Märklin think it is included.

It's probably cheaper to order from LokShop and others, so maybe it doesn't matter whether they ship to Northern Ireland.