Btw, English-speaking devs: I'd rather you not offer any localization for your app than some really poor automatic (or even LLM-powered) translations that end up being confusing and frustrating more than anything.
Please just spend the time or money to do it well. 🙏
Even Apple's to blame here.
Here's the Weather app incorrectly labeling a *heat wave* weather alert as “Intempéries,” which is only used in French to describe *wet* weather conditions, such as storms, heavy rain, or snow, and never in the context of extreme heat.
I strongly suspect the person who localized this string simply looked up the translation for the original string “Severe Weather” and chose “Intempéries” as the first result they found.
I filed a feedback for this issue almost exactly 3 years ago today, but Apple marked it as “works as currently designed.”
And if that's not clear:
No, to a French-speaking person, using "Intempéries" to describe a heat wave makes absolutely no sense.
Good news: this is fixed in iOS 26.1, yay
The label now says "Vigilance" in French (France), which matches Météo France's nomenclature.
@joesteel There is a specific word for that in French: "Canicule" https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canicule
This is the word 99% of French people recognize and use to talk about heat waves and government-issued heat wave warnings (i.e., Le Monde here if you want an example: https://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2025/08/11/la-canicule-monte-d-un-cran-dans-le-sud-ouest-je-ne-joue-pas-avec-la-chaleur_6628050_3245.html)
@binford2k @joesteel Well yes there is, you could say "Phénomène météorologique violent"' for instance.
I think the label should say "Canicule" though when it's about a heatwave.
@nileane ”Works as currently designed” is such a weird status. It’s true, but the design is faulty, that’s the issue!
Windows weather used to have a weird translation to Swedish. Don’t remember the exact condition but it was the word ”safe”, got translated title Swedish word for the kind of safe you store valuables in.
So weird when these massive obscenely rich companies refuse to hire people to do their translations.