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

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?

If you have flags that might 'offend' then just add the other flag as well and use the same settings.

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.

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.

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