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

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.<p>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.<p>[edit]<p>There was a discussion last week about using IP geolocation for determining language that might be of some relevance: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=741093" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=741093</a>

I would say do not use flags unless you don't mind being dragged into world politics :-)<p>I can give you the example of Arabic that is the national language across 22 countries. Which flag would you choose there?<p>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.<p>Of course if you are only supporting a few languages this may not be a big issue.

Flags don't mean languages. Don't use a flag to mean a language.<p>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.

Apart from all the very wise arguments already mentioned in the thread, flags also tend to turn your UI into angry fruit salad.

I built this: translate.songbirdnest.com<p>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.<p>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.<p>2. We supported US and UK English. The UK people loved this and it was one of the first translations we received.<p>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.<p>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?<p>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.

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.

I worked on many multi-lingual websites and always used the name of the language in its native form (Arabic =&#62; عربي, Greek =&#62; Ελληνική, etc ) to offer language selection. It works very well for me. I agree with others who advise against using flags for this.

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.

I agree, a specific flag does not necessarily mean a specific language, and it's unnecessarily provocative.<p>However, flags in general are associated with the idea of language.<p>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.<p>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.<p>But don't expect "foreign" speakers to speak the default language just because they happen to be reading your site from a particular country.<p>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.

Why not just a menu of the written-out names of the languages, with each language name in its own language?<p>"English", "Deutsch", "Português", etc.<p>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.

Hi all,<p>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:<p>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<p>Anyone see an issue with this approach?

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.<p>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.

&#62;<i>Would a Taiwanese person be annoyed if the Flag for Chinese Traditional was China's flag?</i><p>Yes. Identity is <i>the</i> 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.

I find two letter codes more usable:<p>EN English IT Italian AR Arabic<p>Of course you can separate them from the language name by a different font or background color.

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

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