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Ask HN: Do people care about flags when selecting a site language?

10 points by DavidHogan ↗ HN
I'm working on a site that supports multiple languages, and we are using a flag icon to indicate the current language. The language selection dropdown will have both the flag and the name of the language.

I would love to get your opinions on the following questions, as well as any relative experiences you can share.

1. Is a US citizen likely to be annoyed if the icon for English is the British flag? (assuming we don't support both US and UK English languages)

2. Should both US English and UK English be supported?

3. Would a Taiwanese person be annoyed if the Flag for Chinese Traditional was China's flag?

4. Would it be better to not have flags? If so, what is a good way to indicate that the language can be changed?

5. Would a non-english speaking user recognize a dropdown list control with the word 'English' on it and realize that this how the language can be changed?

29 comments

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jacquesm
If you have flags that might 'offend' then just add the other flag as well and use the same settings.
DavidHogan
Yeah, we could do that, although there are a lot of countries that speak English but people seem to either use the US or UK variant as far as I can tell.
jacquesm
The differences are mostly in the 'locale' issues, especially dates. I got around that by doing 'Jan 1st 2009', in stead of the strictly numerical options.

The language issues are less of a problem, they're minor spelling issues such as 'colour' vs 'color'. I never had any complaints about those.

Australians and Canadians have long ago dropped most of their English spelling details, Americans don't care too much from what I can see. Some very purist English folks have sent an email or two (one about 'gray' vs 'grey', go figure...) but for the most part it is just whatever works.

There is a lot of tolerance for this in end users, they understand that you have to make choices.

Here was an interesting thread on this not that long ago:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=741093

GiraffeNecktie
It's not quite true that Canadians have dropped British spelling. Careful writers still follow British conventions, but no Canadian will be bothered by US spelling on a site that is directed at an American or international audience. Some people will notice and mind if the site appears to be a Canadian site targeted at Canadians (e.g. a Canadian government site).
jacquesm
Well, I've lived there in total for about 5 years and nobody in all that time ever remarked on this, but I did notice that older Canadians tend to favour (...) British-English spelling, the younger generation is much more US-English slanted.

Agreed on the governmental stuff, that's where the big differences are, but then again, those have to be bi-lingual anyway.

gstar
Ha. I double dare you to ask an Australian how you spell colour or authorise. They'd argue with you about them not being English 'details' but rather American 'misspellings', too.
mooism2
Flags don't mean languages. Don't use a flag to mean a language.

You don't need to explicitly indicate what language the page is in, because the text on the page is in that language. What you do need to do is indicate --- without words --- that the drop down box is for selecting a different language.

rdouble
I built this: translate.songbirdnest.com

You don't see flags on the site, but in the language package you download, there are flags. I can't remember if we used to display the flags on the site - it's been redesigned since I left.

1. US citizens are not annoyed by the UK flag. As someone else pointed out, if someone in the US sees a British flag they will probably think the site is not for them. I don't think it works the other way around since the USA dominates international media.

2. We supported US and UK English. The UK people loved this and it was one of the first translations we received.

3. Certain mainland Chinese people are annoyed by Taiwan's existence. Aside from technical errors and categorizations that were simply wrong, the only complaints I received were from mainland Chinese people trying to get me to remove the Taiwanese language pack.

4. Flags look cool but cause some problems with languages that are spoken in different countries, or single countries with many languages. Do you really need Swiss French and France French? Do you need an Indian flag for every language spoken in India?

I actually did have different language packs for the same language in different countries. 22 different kinds of Arabic, etc. However, this was a lot of extra work I made for myself and if I were to do it over again I would not use flags or tie the languages to countries.

ErrantX
> We supported US and UK English. The UK people loved this and it was one of the first translations we received.

As a brit I can back that up. There's no malice in the feeling but a common consensus here is that our English is very different from the US version (coff the first coff :D) so it's nice to see it recognised and supported.

foldr
Speaking as another Brit I really don't get it. Leaving aside differences in pronunciation, the only thing that separates the two dialects is a few minor spelling/vocabulary differences. I don't remember ever bothering to change from US to UK English on sites that support both. The one exception might be if dates are involved, in which case it is confusing to have the US order.
gstar
Go to the US, and ask for a 'glass of water' anywhere. Honestly, hardly anyone will get it first time - and usually you have to break down and ask for a 'wadder'.

Same with Butter.

There are some major differences that aren't obvious - us brits tend to be more flexible with mangling of the pronunciation (because everyone here does), but in the US they like it their way or the highway, so to speak.

foldr
I live in the US and that's not really my experience, but I was thinking more of written communication, where the differences are very small. (I did say "leaving aside differences in pronunciation.")
pbhjpbhj
I'd say using the USA flag will disenfranchise Brits (to varying degrees) - we're generally annoyed when those in the USA assume everyone reading an English language page is centred in the culture of the USA. Or at least that's the impression I get.

Personally I'd try and go for a dropdown list of language names in that language - probably choosing the default selection from the UA string or the accept-language; then keeping the language setting in a cookie.

gr366
While mooism2 is correct and flags don't mean languages, I think it's a common enough pattern on web sites that you can just choose one or the other (USA or UK) for English. But you should then be consistent with spelling.

It depends on how you want the site to be perceived. As an American, if I see the British flag next to an English language selection, I'm not offended, but I do feel like the site is targeted more toward European users.

jm4
Lose the flags. I'd venture to guess all of the languages you're supporting are used in multiple countries so it doesn't make much sense. Besides, it's confusing to users anyway. A Latin American user is going to be looking for Spanish- not the flag of Spain. You're better off displaying the options as text in the respective language.

I saw someone else mention that using flags is a common enough pattern that it's acceptable. While it may be true that it's a common pattern it's still one that's ignorant. Maintaining a website in multiple languages is very difficult so you don't want to shoot yourself in the foot by not properly leading users to their preferred language.

[edit]

There was a discussion last week about using IP geolocation for determining language that might be of some relevance: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=741093

justlearning
I also want to add: in addition to losing the flags, you may want to show the target user's language as the default. eg: if primary target users are spanish, load your site in spanish.

dell,creative websites have a simple - "change your country". perhaps that would suit you?

shorbaji
I would say do not use flags unless you don't mind being dragged into world politics :-)

I can give you the example of Arabic that is the national language across 22 countries. Which flag would you choose there?

The thing is flags come loaded with nationalistic sentiment. You will be dragging yourself into the middle of many political conflicts worldwide. Taiwan/China is one but you will also have Israel/Palestine, Kosovo/Albania and likely others. Users from one national tendency will quickly point out how their flag should be there.

Of course if you are only supporting a few languages this may not be a big issue.

vaksel
why not just use geolocate and give people in USA the USA flag for English, and people in Britain the British flag for English etc
amr
I worked on many multi-lingual websites and always used the name of the language in its native form (Arabic => عربي, Greek => Ελληνική, etc ) to offer language selection. It works very well for me. I agree with others who advise against using flags for this.
thenduks
The flags don't help and simply based on the number of questions you have about the subject it's obvious that it's not clear cut how to handle the issue. Drop them.
idlewords
Apart from all the very wise arguments already mentioned in the thread, flags also tend to turn your UI into angry fruit salad.
Sapient
While a flag may work for some countries, don't forget that not all countries have a single official language. Placing a South African flag on your site would confuse most South Africans as we have 11 official languages (probably a worst case scenario). But there are plenty of other countries with more than one widely spoken and/or official language.
DavidHogan
Hi all,

I've discovered another interesting approach out there - show the user their own flag (via geoip) strictly as a icon indicating that the language can be changed. Next to that goes a menu with all the supported languages listed (in their native character sets). As far as I can tell this solves all the issues I know of:

1. The flag icon provides the user a hint that they can change language 2. Geo politics isn't involved 3. The list of options doesn't get stupidly large

Anyone see an issue with this approach?

AhmadH
I find two letter codes more usable:

EN English IT Italian AR Arabic

Of course you can separate them from the language name by a different font or background color.

Semiapies
Why not just a menu of the written-out names of the languages, with each language name in its own language?

"English", "Deutsch", "Português", etc.

Depending on how many languages you're supporting, you might just make it a short list of links up in the header, at least until one is selected.

xiaoma
>Would a Taiwanese person be annoyed if the Flag for Chinese Traditional was China's flag?

Yes. Identity is the single biggest issue in Taiwanese politics. It would be very difficult to get any more offensive than showing a PRC flag for Taiwan. Don't even go there.

nfnaaron
I agree, a specific flag does not necessarily mean a specific language, and it's unnecessarily provocative.

However, flags in general are associated with the idea of language.

To show that a dropdown means "choose a language" you could put a cluster of neutral, solid-colored flags, a different color for each flag. In the dropdown include the standard country code along with the language name rendered in its own language.

As for what language to start with, either: - "your" language, or the predominate language that the site is developed and operated in, or - geo-location, or - what makes sense to you.

But don't expect "foreign" speakers to speak the default language just because they happen to be reading your site from a particular country.

That said, I think most people these days can find the "choose a language" knob, so just try not be rude and you'll be OK.