Flags Are Not Languages • Hacker News Board

Re: Flags Are Not Languages

#41

Post by 082349872349872 » Sun, May 05, 2024, 10:23 AM UTC

ncclporterror wrote: post #30

The website argues that using a flag for a language may confuse or even offend users. It argues English would most appropriately be represented by the flag of England, but few people know the flag of England, so English is usually represented by the flag of the UK or the US, neither of which are appropriate because other languages are spoken in the UK and English does not originate from the US. I would argue that usi…

There's always ISO 639, which has three chances of being acceptable to end users: slim, fat, and none.

What flag would you suggest for http://als.wikipedia.org or http://pdc.wikipedia.org ?

Re: Flags Are Not Languages

#42

Post by Ekaros » Sun, May 05, 2024, 10:25 AM UTC

huygens6363 wrote: post #40

peterhi wrote: post #4

But the flag was useful to show in the ui where the language setting was. This is especially useful when the language has been set to something I cannot read. I don't know which of 语言设定 and 重置设备 will allow me to set the language back to English. Also flags in the menu means that I can find English easier than 英语

Agreed. Some flag, US, Chinese, I don’t care, signifies “language” in the context of software . That is an easy, universal UI pattern. I don’t see the need to upend this for some notion of offense or other type of PCness.

Hmm, there are counter example Japanese flag on white background would signify nothing...

Re: Flags Are Not Languages

#43

Post by huygens6363 » Sun, May 05, 2024, 10:25 AM UTC

JimDabell wrote: post #9

James_K wrote: post #2

Counterpoint to this website: it is convenient to have symbols to represent things. I don't see them suggesting anything better than flags.

Having the wrong symbol for something is worse than the inconvenience of not having a symbol.

[flagged]

Re: Flags Are Not Languages

#44

Post by 082349872349872 » Sun, May 05, 2024, 10:26 AM UTC

Not a serious proposal: Google is pretty good at detecting when I have the keyboard in the wrong character set and providing me with results for what I would have typed; maybe there just needs to be a text box where you type "what the fuck?" in your own language and script, and the back end guesses it from there?

Re: Flags Are Not Languages

#45

Post by huygens6363 » Sun, May 05, 2024, 10:27 AM UTC

Ekaros wrote: post #42

huygens6363 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Some flag, US, Chinese, I don’t care, signifies “language” in the context of software . That is an easy, universal UI pattern. I don’t see the need to upend this for some notion of offense or other type of PCness.

Hmm, there are counter example Japanese flag on white background would signify nothing...

That’s a design issue and a small and easily fixable one at that.

Re: Flags Are Not Languages

#46

Post by mkl95 » Sun, May 05, 2024, 10:29 AM UTC

In my experience, most engineers and product managers assume that users are governed by some monolithic, absolute power with a single official way of doing things.

This is useful early on to deliver their MVP and grab their first batch of users.

However, their assumption quickly falls apart when a significant subset of those users live in some region with their own regulations. Gambling/betting, invoicing, and payment processing are just a few examples.

If I see a flag icon next to a language, it's not worrying by itself, but it's a red flag about how things work under the hood. It's telling me that the company does not go the extra mile to build a realistic mental model that works for all users. And eventually, the product's limitations will impact some feature that is mission critical for my business.

Re: Flags Are Not Languages

#47

Post by andrewshadura » Sun, May 05, 2024, 10:29 AM UTC

ncclporterror wrote: post #30

The website argues that using a flag for a language may confuse or even offend users. It argues English would most appropriately be represented by the flag of England, but few people know the flag of England, so English is usually represented by the flag of the UK or the US, neither of which are appropriate because other languages are spoken in the UK and English does not originate from the US. I would argue that usi…

To give you an example of flags being offensive: most people who would ever choose Belarusian anywhere in any computer system will find the current Belarusian flag offensive because it represents the government that oppresses their culture and represses people who dare use the language in public.

Another example: a lot of people speak Russian outside of Russia. Many of them have nothing to do with Russia and never lived there, and even without the devastating war that Russia is currently waging against Ukraine they don't want to associate their language with Russia and its flag.

Re: Flags Are Not Languages

#48

Post by thom » Sun, May 05, 2024, 10:31 AM UTC

Perhaps one day the engineers and designers will make peace, the former conceding the need to be technically correct despite wildly successful UI, the latter adding bevels back to buttons.

Re: Flags Are Not Languages

#49

Post by justsomehnguy » Sun, May 05, 2024, 10:31 AM UTC

telmo wrote: post #35

HL33tibCe7 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. It completely depends on the situation. As another example: gendered bathrooms. The icons used on gendered bathrooms have a woman wearing a skirt, and a man wearing trousers. These icons are "wrong": a man can wear a skirt, and a woman can wear trousers (in fact, nowadays most women do). It's nonetheless certainly more useful to have a "wrong" icon than none at all in this case.

Bathrooms need icons because they have to assume users who can't read, or don't know the local language. None of these two problems apply to language selection 99.9999% of the time: if you can't read, you can't use a system based on reading no matter the language, and if you don't recognize the name of a language in a list, you also do not want to select it.

Quite obviously you never interacted with any software which defaults to the language you can't read, despite having a support for the language you do understand.

Re: Flags Are Not Languages

#50

Post by throw__away7391 » Sun, May 05, 2024, 10:33 AM UTC

This feels more like someone with a political axe to grind rather than a UX one. I travel full time and lived in 20 countries in the last year. Unfortunately many sites deliberately ignore Accept-Language headers and instead geolocate you and guess your language, localizing the entire site including the language selection menu, so this is a problem I am very familiar with and I constantly need to change the language on virtually every site I visit.

Ideally a site's language selection menu button includes a globe icon so you can figure out where need to click to change the language, and a flag for quick identification.