Ordinary Gweilo

How difficult can it be to have Chinese as the default language on your website whilst providing easy access to the English version?

Well, www.samsung.com.hk starts off promisingly with a front page that has both English and Chinese, but then dumps you on to a page that is entirely in Chinese. 

If you hunt around you will probably find the button that allows you to change the language (see left).  Maybe you are supposed to guess what it's supposed to do?

Next we have the drop-down box for you to select which version of the site you wish to view (see right).  I had problems with this in Google Chrome, but luckily it works OK in Internet Explorer.

As we can see, this is not really a language selection thingy, it's for you to choose which of their international sites you want to view.  So it ought to have a small globe as its symbol to make its function clear, surely?

And what would someone who accesses the Hong Kong site be likely to want?  Probably not the Argentinian or Austrian or Belgian versions of the site.  I think they would be most likely to want either the English or Chinese versions of the Hong Kong site.

So couldn't they just put an "English" button on the Chinese version and  中文 on the English version to allow you to switch languages?  Wouldn't that be simpler?

There's a final "gotcha" after you select Hong Kong/English: