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
Ask HN: Do people care about flags when selecting a site language?
11–20 of 30 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do people care about flags when selecting a site language?
#12I 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.
Re: Ask HN: Do people care about flags when selecting a site language?
#13I 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 work…
> 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.
Re: Ask HN: Do people care about flags when selecting a site language?
#14The 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.
Re: Ask HN: Do people care about flags when selecting a site language?
#15Apart from all the very wise arguments already mentioned in the thread, flags also tend to turn your UI into angry fruit salad.
Re: Ask HN: Do people care about flags when selecting a site language?
#16I 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.
Strongly seconded. And don't do what this site did, and only list the alternative languages in the language that is currently selected:
Re: Ask HN: Do people care about flags when selecting a site language?
#17While 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.
Re: Ask HN: Do people care about flags when selecting a site language?
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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…
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).
Re: Ask HN: Do people care about flags when selecting a site language?
#19Hi 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?
Re: Ask HN: Do people care about flags when selecting a site language?
#20Lose 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 ac…
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?