Re: Howto provide and link to foreign language translations?

On 22 Sep, Paul Arzul wrote:

> On Sat 20-Sep-2003 at 12:44:14PM +0100, Jonathan Chetwynd wrote:
>> 
>> Flags are not that helpful, is their a resource similar to ascii with 
>> standardised (gif) flags?
>> what do people feel about this approach?
> 
> for more than you wanted to know about flags and languages:
> 
> http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/flags.html

  That particular article has been offered as a reference many, many
  times. Not too long ago there was a debate regarding the topic in the
  ciwah newsgroup - it ended, as it always does, with insult.

  However, I would like to offer up a different opinion. Flags as
  symbol for languages are not, by users looking for content in their
  own language, sees as insulting, stupid, or dysfunctional.

  The large accessibility project that I've mentioned before contained,
  among other things, questions put to immigrants on language issues
  with Swedish government websites. Several of the answers indicate that
  users find flags "Perhaps not perfect" but "It's a common way to
  indicate language, easy to spot, and intuitive".

  I'd suggest keeping the *users* in mind.


> hope that helps,

  Actually, no. People I've shown that article to - people outside of
  the web "development" culture - tend to react with agreement to the
  article, until they run across the colonial references. Then they tend
  to disregard it.

  I'd suggest not using that article if you want to convince people that
  flags are a bad habit. It's far too emotional.

-- 
 -    Tina Holmboe                    Greytower Technologies
   tina@greytower.net                http://www.greytower.net/
   [+46] 0708 557 905

Received on Monday, 22 September 2003 06:37:51 UTC