Website Language Choice

Malice

Today we were discussing the best approach to add language choices to a website. We decided initially to go with national flags to represent language choices e.g. the Irish flag representing the Irish language, the German flag representing the German language etc. The first debate we had was on how best to represent the English language. I proposed using the English flag, someone else suggested the Union Jack and then we thought about possible issues with that:

• American visitors might prefer to see the American flag.
• People might click on the Irish flag and then panic when they see a screen full of Gaeilge.
• People may have a dislike for the English/Union Jack flag.

I see that sites like Wikipedia simply use a bulleted list so maybe that's the best way to go. We certainly wouldn't be looking to offer anywhere near that many choices of language. This link makes some very valid points about not using a flag at all so in my now confused state I'm wondering what way others have approached this topic?

Kudos

A diagonal split mixing the american flag and the union jack would be best imo.

Malice

Kudos wrote:

A diagonal split mixing the american flag and the union jack would be best imo.

I can't say I've ever seen that anywhere. Do you have a link to a site taking that approach?

Gordon

I've seen that on two forums, but I can't remember which tbh. It's a good way to go imo.

mneylon

malice_ wrote:

I can't say I've ever seen that anywhere. Do you have a link to a site taking that approach?

I've seen that on several sites in the past

phil

I'd be in the "No flag" camp. A flag (in general) represents a country, not a language. However, I can understand that a visual representation of the language is required (how can someone who doesn't speak English understand the text?")

To be honest I don't think you're going to get any new opinions than the ones presented in that link. You just need to make a decision

I'd go with what one user posted on the comments page:

http://europa.eu/index_en.htm

Malice

Funnily enough we were thinking about the drop-down list approach earlier! I think that is probably the best approach to use overall.

Liam Byrne

Couple of small points:

1) American English isn't the same as European English, what with their preference for "z"s and the omission of "u"s - e.g. "organize" [sic] and "color" [sic], so these would indeed be two separate language options

2) If I saw an Irish flag, I'd probably expect to see an English-language website; at the very least, I detest having to click a UK flag in order to visit a website, and I'm no raving psycho nationalist.....although this is probably because of most of the U.K. companies and U.S. corporations (and even some European countries) lumping us together and make Irish people use the .co.uk sites because they couldn't be arsed respecting us enough to give us our own. One of the links above, though, equates this to a Brazilian having to click on a Portugese flag, so maybe I don't need to be so defensive ?

3) You're also forgetting (at least) Australia & New Zealand, in terms of the primarily English-speaking countries.

So bottom line (personal preference) - don't use flags; as pointed out, they represent countries, not languages.

Malice

Liam Byrne wrote:

1) American English isn't the same as European English, what with their preference for "z"s and the omission of "u"s - e.g. "organize" [sic] and "color" [sic], so these would indeed be two separate language options

I don't think I've ever seen a site which offered that level of language differentiation. Should there be a division then between the English language as used by people from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland for example? There are going to be syntactic, spelling and grammatical differences but anyone with a reasonable level of English should be able to understand the meaning.

Liam Byrne wrote:

2) If I saw an Irish flag, I'd probably expect to see an English-language website; at the very least, I detest having to click a UK flag in order to visit a website, and I'm no raving psycho nationalist.....although this is probably because of most of the U.K. companies and U.S. corporations (and even some European countries) lumping us together and make Irish people use the .co.uk sites because they couldn't be arsed respecting us enough to give us our own. One of the links above, though, equates this to a Brazilian having to click on a Portugese flag, so maybe I don't need to be so defensive ?

Or what about a Canadian clicking on a French flag I also dislike when a .ie domain redirects to a .co.uk domain or I have to specify my location as United Kingdom.

Liam Byrne wrote:

3) You're also forgetting (at least) Australia & New Zealand, in terms of the primarily English-speaking countries.

Agreed. The discussion really just came about as a client wanted to offer their website services in Irish and we got talking about other language options such as Polish, Czech, French etc. I don't think we will need to ever draw a distinction between American English, Australian English and Proper English. Of course if the client's business grows to that extent then fair enough, we can implement the extra languages. For a fee of course

smcelhinney

Grab the locale somehow and display the flag for that locale. en-GB or en-US.

For non GB/US visitors I think the Union Jack is probably the best representation..

I mean, we dont want them all going around saying "color" and "favor" and "licence"..

Seth Brundle

Kudos wrote:

A diagonal split mixing the american flag and the union jack would be best imo.

I just saw one linked from anothere thread:
(FROM http://www.datacleaneurope.ie/eshop/index.php)

i71jskz5xu42pb

malice_ wrote:

We decided initially to go with national flags to represent language choices

This is a mistake in my opinion. Nothing irks me more as an Irish English speaker than having to select a Union Jack or the Star Spangled Banner as my language. The Union Jack is a country's flag not a language's flag.

Just go with a list:

• English
• Français
• Deutsch
• Gaeilge

If it's a drop down list you may need some cue for the user to indicate that this is the language selection box

See here for Jakob Nielsen's take. He talks a bit about flags but I'm not sure I agree with him.

There's loads you can do in terms of taking a good guess at the user's preferred language (URL, ip geo location, locale http header) that should mean the user rarely needs to select their language.

Liam Byrne

kbannon wrote:

I just saw one linked from anothere thread:
(FROM http://www.datacleaneurope.ie/eshop/index.php)

So, in light of the discussion, what should an Irish, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand or even South African person click in that shop ?

Seth Brundle

Im not getting drawn into that end of the discussion - I was just providing the image!