Hoi,
Given that I reached out time and again to quite senior Wikimedia employees to explain to me how Commons works for other languages, I appreciate that it may be unexpected to you. As this is how you frame it, it is obvious that WMF does not appreciate to be called out for help, get criticised and does not analyse the merit of such signals. As I said for many years now, Commons will be as relevant as Wikipedia when it becomes truly multicultural. Just consider, what do streets look like in Senegal or a policeofficer in Nepal, a cathedral in Nigeria and a health centre in the Netherlands. Do we know? Can we easily find it?

Because of this lack of attention, we are still at phase 0 for Commons, having little ability to find basic pictures in languages other than English. 

At some stage there was a team of developers tasked with language support. That was many years in our past. With people dedicated to the technology and the development of approaches for other languages, Wikipedia and Commons will become truly multicultural. To put it into perspective the Wikipedia gender gap is about the percentage of articles about men vs other genders. Now consider what percentage of our pictures is about other cultures but the dominant ones?
Thanks,
       GerardM

On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 20:16, Keegan Peterzell <kpeterzell@wikimedia.org> wrote:
There's some unexpected behavior in ranking results, it's being investigated to be patched as needed [1]. Media Search is designed for multilingual environments and this will be corrected.


On Tue, May 11, 2021 at 10:30 AM Hay (Husky) <huskyr@gmail.com> wrote:
I tried Gerard's example, and indeed i couldn't get it to work. If i:

1) Go to commons.wikimedia.org in an incognito Chrome window
2) Switch to 'Dutch' using the Language select dropdown on the left
3) Search for 'olifant' (Dutch for 'elephant')

I only get results where the string 'olifant' is available somewhere
in the raw wikitext, not in a translated 'depicts' statement.

-- Hay

On Tue, May 11, 2021 at 4:51 PM Keegan Peterzell
<kpeterzell@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 2:56 PM Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hoi,
>> A previous iteration of Special:MediaSearch provided results in my language. The results were based on the media that had a depict statement on the subject that I was looking for.When I look for bever, I expect to find beavers. I don't.
>>
>> Is it possible to have a version of Special:MediaSearch that actually works for other languages but English? The previous iteration worked for me.
>> Thanks,
>>       GerardM
>>
>
> This should still be the case, it's being investigated.
>
> --
> Keegan Peterzell (he/him)
> Technical Collaboration Specialist
> Wikimedia Foundation
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--
Keegan Peterzell (he/him)
Technical Collaboration Specialist
Wikimedia Foundation
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