One common design element when offering different versions of your website in various languages is to use a national flag of a country that is most often associated with that language as a designator for a specific language choice. I wonder if this is actually a wise choice. People speaking German, but are from Austria, Switzerland, Belgium or Luxemburg (to name just a few) usually have to give their language preference by clicking on the flag of the Federal Republic of Germany. Don't get me started on all the African nations that have to choose the flag of France or the dilemma of what to use for English (is it the Union Jack or the Star-Sprangled Banner? And what about Irleland, New Zealand and Australia?).
While you could dismiss all this nitpicking as unnecessary political correctness, there are cases where you actually make a political statement by using a flag. While the Taiwanese flag is used in Taiwan and appears to be a valid choice for "traditional Chinese characters" (in contrast to the simplified version used in Mainland China), the People's Republic of China doesn't recognize Taiwan as an independent entity, but rather regards it as a part of China. Most countries with diplomatic relationships with the PRC follow this interpretation, at least officially. Same thing applies to minority languages in China, such as Tibetan. Depending on what side you want to listen to, you have the choice to use the flag of a "separist movement" or the "oppressors". And what flag should you use for Kurdish? The PKK's Party Flag? What about languages without an official nation, e.g. Yiddish or Aramaic? You could probably go on endlessly.
Wouldn't just giving the name of the language in its official form be an alternative? Well, in most cases, yes. A notable exception is Korean, where you have to choose between "Hangugeo" (한국어) and "Joseoneo" (조선어), as North and South Korea refer to "Korea" by different names and thus use different words for the language spoken in that country. In Inter-Korean talks, "uri mal" (우리말), i.e. "our language" is used as a compromise when referring to the Korean language. At the Korean institute of the Bonn University, the institute's name is given in English ("Korea Department") when communicating with North Korea. Using the official Korean name (which uses the South-Korean term "hanguk") would be too insulting...
But I disgress. If someone has a better idea for a metaphor than flags that can be used for language choosing, I'm eager to hear it.
Posted by jens at January 10, 2004 02:40 PM | TrackBackSome websites use a string representation of languages.
E.g. http://www.bcn.es offers "Catal", "Castellano" and "English".
Some sites use worldmaps with image-maps and combine it with a language selection (like you can always choose English).
That is not a bad idea but it takes more steps then a simple link/dropdown menu.
I've come across this problem a few times with Welsh. Most Welsh-language websites are bilingual or semi-bilingual (often with English as the primary language). So how do you represent "English" and "Welsh" graphically/iconically? If you use the flag of Wales to represent "Welsh", what about the 80% of people who live in Wales, whose flag it also is, who don't speak Welsh? And what about "English"? Do you use the Union Flag or the flag of England?
I have toyed with the idea of using conventional two-letter abbreviations (EN for English and CY for Welsh (Cymraeg)), but I really don't think they're as immediately comprehensible to the general public.
Best thing seems to be to use full language names, as Jens suggests, but it's not so iconic and it takes up more space :-(
Very interesting blog, by the way!
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