Not THAT Advanced!

A few days ago, someone wrote us to tell us that they went to an article of ours using Firefox, and was greeted with this:

â„¼ä½„å‘ƒå ™â…呈䱍å€
䉕䥌⁃ⴢ⼯㍗⽃䐯䑔ä
䵔⁌⸴‰牔湡楳楴湯污⼯久㸢਍਍æ
¼æµ´ã¹¬à¨æ ¼æ…¥ã¹¤à¨ã°‰æ¥´æ±´ã¹¥æ•„汬ä°
ç‘¡ç‘ ©æ‘µâ¥
ã ™ƒã€´ä´ 摯⼼楴汴㹥਍਍猼祴敬ç
灹㵥琢硥⽴獣

≳ാ㰊ⴡഭऊ㠩¡æ½¨æ•¶â²â»æ½£æ½¬ã ©²âŒ
æ ™¦ãŒ³ã€°ç´ ਍ⴭ
ാ㰊猯祴敬ാഊ㰊䍓䥒呐ä°
ä¹å•‡äãµ…ä¨¢ç ™¡å¡ç‰£ç ©â‰´à´¾ã°Šâ´¡à´­à´Šà¤Šæ½¤æ• ®ã´
æ˜ æ±¡æ•³à¨à¨â¼¯â´­à¨â¼¯â´­ä¸
ç‘¥æ³ç¡â¥æ•’çŒ­ç © ©â¥ç•‚

etc.

He tried using IE, and got English. He tried Firefox on another machine, and it spoke English, too.

Last night, I was looking around, and a Firefox screen gave me this:

I tried IE, and got this:

(Yes, I know he was 67. Blame the NYT, not IE, for that.)

I opened up another copy of Firefox, copied the link there, and the page came up fine.

I don’t think it’s doing an instantaneous translation. 🙂

Has this happened to anyone else? Does anyone know why this happens, or what can be done about it?

In both cases, it’s Firefox 1.0, at least in my case, one unadorned with plugins.

Anybody have a clue?

Ed