djst's nest

Can't we just keep 'm ;) ?

even tho the logical arguments make sense...

it's nitpicking.

if the flags look nice.. and are practical.. take up less space (who wants to skim thru 25 words to find the desired language?) then go for it.

web design is about art and communication, not just logic.

i'm in favour of langauge codes.

Yes, you should definately get rid of the flags! Flags represent countries, not languages. The current list of flags is potentially volitile. English was invented in England, not the USA, so that's the American flag out. But then do you use the flag of England (as that's the 'home' of the language) or the Union Flag as that's the modern country English originated from (England is not an independent country; it is one of the four consitute countries of the UK)? Getting complicated. Furthermore, many languages are spoken in many countries (English and Spanish, for example). More complicated. And there's also political implications. The flag representing Korean is the South Korean flag. What about North Korea? That's a whole political argument you don't want to get into. Very Complicated.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure if using ISO codes is the answer either, as they're not well known enough. Take MozillaZine as an example. It uses two-letter codes, but they are the Internet domains, rather than the ISO codes. French (fr) and German (de) work well as the ISO and country codes are indentical, but the others cause problems. Japanese's ISO code is 'ja', but Japan's domain of 'jp' is used as its far better known. Chinese provides an even better example: 'cn' is China's domain and well known, but the ISO code is 'zh' - who assoicates 'zh' with Chinese? MozillaZine gets away with using the country abbrivations as they are so well known that they can also act as the language's abbrivation. Unfortunately, Mozilla Firebird Help is translated into many lesser known lanuages, so this is not an option (who will know that 'si' represents Slovenia?) and brings the countries, not languages problem into play again.

So really, your only solution is to go back to using the full language names. As you've mentioned, this breaks your layout, so why not tweak your layout? A 'language bar' bolted to the very top of the page would give more room for lanuages than you have now. Of course if many more languages were added that will fill up too. So you could try listing the translations on the sidebar verticially. This will, however, reduce their prominance, but that's a price you might just have to pay.

One more suggestion: List the languages in their language (English, français, Deutsch, etc.), as this will make it a lot easier for non-English readers to find their translation.

Responding to:

"Chinese provides an even better example: 'cn' is China's domain and well known, but the ISO code is 'zh' - who assoicates 'zh' with Chinese?"

Well the only real question is whether people who can read the language recognize it, particularly when it is contextualised by a long string of other language codes.

Having said that I would go with the language names in their own language and fix the design to fit them.

Further suggestion:

replace the flags with en es fr de etc. but write out the languages in full eslewhere (the bottom of the page perhaps).

Well, you could always do a dropdown.

Yeah, flags are bad.

Re: language codes, the people who actually speak that language will know the two-letter code for their language. So it's no problem. So what if I don't know what "zh" is? I don't speak Chinese anyway :-)

Gerv

I totally agree with the 4th poster. An american flag for the English version is just an insult, and I'm sure this is true for many other countries and languages (as stated above). A flag is a symbol of a country, not a language. My suggestion would be to have either a small bar across the very top (separate to the current panels) with the languages written out in full (in their own language) or to have a drop down box at the bottom of the side menu saying "View this web page in:"

'The people who actually speak that language will know the two-letter code for their language. So it's no problem.'

I'm not so sure that applies with Chinese though, as it doesn't use the Western alphabet (characters such as 'A', 'B' and 'C'), but uses its own symbols. So would a Chinese speaker known that 'zh' is Chinese? It's the equilevent of expecting an English speaker to known what 'English' is abbrivated in Chinese characters.

The ideas about using a drop-down list and having abbrivations at the top and full names at the bottom are good, but there rely on the user looking around for the language link. Would someone who can't read any English know to click on a drop-down list saying 'View this web page in:' or to scroll down to the bottom?

So the best solution is for the language name to be displayed in full in its own language. The website of S4C (a Welsh TV channel broadcasting in both Welsh and English) does a good job of this. By default, the homepage at http://www.s4c.co.uk/ is displayed in Welsh, but someone who speaks English, but no Welsh, can easily see to click the link at the top-right, as it is written in full (it even says 'English Site' for added clarity), in a prominent place and it says 'English' not 'Saesneg' (the Welsh for 'English').

So I'm sticking by my earlier suggestion of bolting the the language bar to the top of the page and having the language name written in full in its own language.

As long as the images have appropriate title and alt attributes, I see no problem with keeping flags.

CNET News.com: New ISO fees on the horizon?
http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-5079256.html

Information technology standards groups are raising warning flags over a proposal that could raise fees for commonly-used industry codes, including two-letter country abbreviations, used in many commercial software products.

At stake is a tentative proposal from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to add usage royalties for several code standards, a move that opponents say could weaken standards adherence by forcing software providers to pay a fee for each ISO-compliant product they sell. The standards--ISO 3166, ISO 4217, ISO 639--cover country, currency and language codes, respectively.

One more NO to flags here.

Just make a simple link 'Other languages', because sooner or later you'll have to remove language codes, too. And they aren't really user-friendly.

Flags are bad. Either the ISO codes with title="full language name" (in its own language) or a drop down list (again, with each language name in its own language). It seems silly to me to have all the alternate languages spelled in English on the English site, in German on the German site, etc.

Yeah! Do it just like you have on Tb Help! Perfect!