[TYPO3-english] Links do not open in localisation

[Francois Bertrand]

On my website are 3 languages, default is English, then German and French

Problem is that links to external urls do not go the urls when using
IE 9 and less, they only sometimes work in English but never in German
and in French, instead they seem to follow the navigation path and
open the new window with 'page not found'.

In the root template, the setting for 'target for external links' is
set at: _self.

I do not have this problem on other browsers.

Any ideas?