6 ms·

But the flag was useful to show in the ui where the language setting was. This is especially useful when the language has been set to something I cannot read. I

But the flag was useful to show in the ui where the language setting was. This is especially useful when the language has been set to something I cannot read. I don't know which of 语言设定 and 重置设备 will allow me to set the language back to English. Also flags in the menu means that I can find English easier than 英语

quadhome 2y ago
Wikipedia uses a “文Ａ” icon; IMHO far better than a flag. What flag would you expect to see? As for finding the language in the menu, listening a language in the foreign language seems like bad design too. The menu should list “English” as an option! See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language#/languages https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language#/languages
- ReleaseCandidat 2y ago
  Both versions is the correct answer, like in the screenshot in the article.
  - quadhome 2y ago
    Yes! I meant to write “only” in the foreign language. Good catch.
- mik1998 2y ago
  I personally had no idea that icon let you change the language of articles (a concept I explicitly looked for before). Still confused at what the icon is actually supposed to mean.
  - bradrn 2y ago
    It’s a Chinese character and a Latin letter. The idea, presumably, being that of ‘multiple languages’.
    - nkrisc 2y ago
      But I don’t know Chinese so I don’t know that is an arbitrary Chinese character with the Latin A for contrast. I’ve seen languages that don’t use the Latin alphabet occasionally intersperse Latin letters before so until I was told just now I assumed that this Chinese character with A had some significance in Chinese. So I don’t think it’s very effective at that.
      - a_random_canuck 2y ago
        Really? When I first saw it I understood it must have to do with changing languages.
        willcipriano 2y ago
        I thought it was a weird logo or something, no idea it was even a button.
        nkrisc 2y ago
        Never struck me that way, though I can see it in retrospect. On the other hand, if I see a flag, I know that’s language settings. In don’t know that using flags for language settings is more semantic, but it’s convention so I know what it means. I’ve seen flags used to indicate language settings for as long as I’ve been using computers.
        epage 2y ago
        Visiting the Netherlands right now and every time I visit local.google.com, it reverts back to Dutch. I had no idea what the symbol on its own and only figured it out when searching how to get things back to English and seeing the symbol used in that specific context.
        canadianfella 2y ago
        [dead]
    - mik1998 2y ago
      I recall thinking it was a compass before. They should've chosen a more complicated Chinese character if that is what they wanted to portray.
  - derefr 2y ago
    Wikipedia's UI has perhaps been over-optimized over time, by people already too familiar with said UI, and so has lost the natural context cues for learnability. (Similar to what happened to modern smartphone UIs re: secondary-interaction gestures.) Here's how the same chooser looks on Wiktionary — which is also how it used to look on Wikipedia, back when Wikipedia used the full default MediaWiki sidebar: https://oshi.at/HhVH/zhWZ.png https://oshi.at/HhVH/zhWZ.png You've got a subsection header "In other languages"; and under it, a list of links titled with the names of languages. (This reads as: these are a set of popular suggested alternative language views of this page, and clicking these links will take you directly to the page in those languages.) And at the end of this list, aligned as the final list item, there's a button with a weird icon with the text "51 more" on it. (And this reads as: clicking here will expand some flyout menu or modal, which will allow you to see you the rest of the list of language options, and perhaps search within them.) In that context, you don't really have to understand the meaning of the icon to know what to do; rather, the interaction of changing language is directed by the rest of the design, and going through it teaches you the meaning of the icon. Which allows you to later understand its use elsewhere in the site's design.
  - sedansesame 2y ago
    The popular reason is likely because 文 is used across East Asia in Chinese and Japanese (Korean and Vietnamese too, though written differently)[0], with the ideograph standing in as a sufficiently different contrast to the Latin alphabet, and as a reference to a major non-latin-alphabet based user market, while being simple enough to render (compared to something more "difficult"[1] like 语/語) It's also been used in the Google Translate logo as well. --- [0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%96%87 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%96%87 [1] Not only because of Simplified/Traditional/Japanese renderings (文 is mostly the same across all three), but more strokes for a small icon is a bad idea regardless
- david_allison 2y ago
  * Use 文Ａ, and ensure you can navigate to the menu only via symbols * The first element should be "use default/system language" * Language names should be displayed untranslated: "Deutsch, English, français" * Optionally display the language in the currently selected language
- jimbobthrowawy 2y ago
  I have also seen this icon on google translate, used to denote text. I wonder who came up with it first. Any time I've seen it, I have immediately guessed what it meant.
- Nullabillity 2y ago
  The flag representing the currently active language, typically.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  > Wikipedia uses a “文Ａ” icon; IMHO far better than a flag. It's not exactly suggestive of a language selector. 文 means "text". "A" doesn't mean anything at all.
  - eloisius 2y ago
    At least to a Chinese reader it’s immediately obvious. 文 is the suffix to all written languages. 中文英文法文西班牙文 etc.
    - Jensson 2y ago
      Most people aren't Chinese readers.
- nitwit005 2y ago
  Salesforce translates (or did when I last used it) all the language and time zone options. If you switched to Japanese by accident, switching back was a bit of a challenge.
- WirelessGigabit 2y ago
  The 文 also appears in the Google Translate icon on iOS [0], which is why I always attributed it to a machine translation, not a version of the article written in another language by a human. [0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/google-translate/id414706506 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/google-translate/id414706506
- mam2 2y ago
  this is one of the most horrible design. there's at least 10 times where I had to look more than once to actually find this button
ReleaseCandidat 2y ago
> I don't know which of 语言设定 and 重置设备 will allow me to set the language back to English. That's why the languages should be presented in their "own" native form (name and alphabet), at least additionally. Which - using the native form and the translation in the current active locale - Apple does, btw., so at least on MacOS your problem does not exist.
- greenish_shores 2y ago
  The should be presented mainly, mostly and primarily in their native form. The form for currently set language should be additional. It's a no-brainer which makes demand for using flags unnecessary, almost making it absurd to use them. But, wait. 语言设定 is "Language settings" and 重置设备 is "Reset device". So the problem here is a bit different, right?
  - ReleaseCandidat 2y ago
    Exactly, that's also how Apple (I'm starting to feel bad to constantly mention them) does it, the native form is "normal font face", the translated one is in lighter grey.
    - mintplant 2y ago
      The problem being posed by 'peterhi is not identifying a particular language in a language selection list. The problem is finding your way over to that language selection list in the first place when presented with a UI in a language you can't read. Imagine you land on a website with the language set to (say) Esperanto, how do you navigate through that to change the language to (say) English?
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    > So the problem here is a bit different, right? I wonder if flags fix that one in any way. It's the convention on sites to put the flags as a top-level element (but you could put "English" there just as easily). But on any device with a menu, the flags are usually only on the language list.
siva7 2y ago
You solve this by displaying the language in its original writing. So it's not swiss but Schwitzerisch!
- sparky_z 2y ago
  That doesn't help you figure out where to go to change the setting, unless you want to list all the available language options at the top of every single page.
huygens6363 2y ago
Agreed. Some flag, US, Chinese, I don’t care, signifies “language” in the context of software. That is an easy, universal UI pattern. I don’t see the need to upend this for some notion of offense or other type of PCness.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  Hmm, there are counter example Japanese flag on white background would signify nothing...
  - huygens6363 2y ago
    That’s a design issue and a small and easily fixable one at that.
- wongarsu 2y ago
  Typically the flag of the current language setting
  - lolinder 2y ago
    At which point you've now assigned flags to languages, with all of the problems that entails.
- lolinder 2y ago
  > some notion of offense or other type of PCness As just one example of what we're talking about, let's take Ireland: after generations of cultural oppression England caused a famine in Ireland that reduced the population by at least 20% between millions of deaths and millions of immigrants. Ireland still hasn't recovered its population to the pre-famine levels. The Irish are literally still recovering from their abuse at the hands of England. They speak English because England made it so through generations of deliberate cultural extermination. It's unreasonable for you to dismiss their desire to not identify themselves with the British flag as some "type of PCness".
  - 2y ago
metafunctor 2y ago
A commonly used icon or symbol for language selection seems to be the globe symbol (U+1F310). HN seems to filter it away, though, so cannot use it in this comment.

quadhome 2y ago

Wikipedia uses a “文Ａ” icon; IMHO far better than a flag. What flag would you expect to see? As for finding the language in the menu, listening a language in the foreign language seems like bad design too. The menu should list “English” as an option! See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language#/languages https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language#/languages

ReleaseCandidat 2y ago
Both versions is the correct answer, like in the screenshot in the article.
- quadhome 2y ago
  Yes! I meant to write “only” in the foreign language. Good catch.
mik1998 2y ago
I personally had no idea that icon let you change the language of articles (a concept I explicitly looked for before). Still confused at what the icon is actually supposed to mean.
- bradrn 2y ago
  It’s a Chinese character and a Latin letter. The idea, presumably, being that of ‘multiple languages’.
  - nkrisc 2y ago
    But I don’t know Chinese so I don’t know that is an arbitrary Chinese character with the Latin A for contrast. I’ve seen languages that don’t use the Latin alphabet occasionally intersperse Latin letters before so until I was told just now I assumed that this Chinese character with A had some significance in Chinese. So I don’t think it’s very effective at that.
    - a_random_canuck 2y ago
      Really? When I first saw it I understood it must have to do with changing languages.
      - willcipriano 2y ago
        I thought it was a weird logo or something, no idea it was even a button.
      - nkrisc 2y ago
        Never struck me that way, though I can see it in retrospect. On the other hand, if I see a flag, I know that’s language settings. In don’t know that using flags for language settings is more semantic, but it’s convention so I know what it means. I’ve seen flags used to indicate language settings for as long as I’ve been using computers.
      - epage 2y ago
        Visiting the Netherlands right now and every time I visit local.google.com, it reverts back to Dutch. I had no idea what the symbol on its own and only figured it out when searching how to get things back to English and seeing the symbol used in that specific context.
      - canadianfella 2y ago
        [dead]
  - mik1998 2y ago
    I recall thinking it was a compass before. They should've chosen a more complicated Chinese character if that is what they wanted to portray.
- derefr 2y ago
  Wikipedia's UI has perhaps been over-optimized over time, by people already too familiar with said UI, and so has lost the natural context cues for learnability. (Similar to what happened to modern smartphone UIs re: secondary-interaction gestures.) Here's how the same chooser looks on Wiktionary — which is also how it used to look on Wikipedia, back when Wikipedia used the full default MediaWiki sidebar: https://oshi.at/HhVH/zhWZ.png https://oshi.at/HhVH/zhWZ.png You've got a subsection header "In other languages"; and under it, a list of links titled with the names of languages. (This reads as: these are a set of popular suggested alternative language views of this page, and clicking these links will take you directly to the page in those languages.) And at the end of this list, aligned as the final list item, there's a button with a weird icon with the text "51 more" on it. (And this reads as: clicking here will expand some flyout menu or modal, which will allow you to see you the rest of the list of language options, and perhaps search within them.) In that context, you don't really have to understand the meaning of the icon to know what to do; rather, the interaction of changing language is directed by the rest of the design, and going through it teaches you the meaning of the icon. Which allows you to later understand its use elsewhere in the site's design.
- sedansesame 2y ago
  The popular reason is likely because 文 is used across East Asia in Chinese and Japanese (Korean and Vietnamese too, though written differently)[0], with the ideograph standing in as a sufficiently different contrast to the Latin alphabet, and as a reference to a major non-latin-alphabet based user market, while being simple enough to render (compared to something more "difficult"[1] like 语/語) It's also been used in the Google Translate logo as well. --- [0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%96%87 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%96%87 [1] Not only because of Simplified/Traditional/Japanese renderings (文 is mostly the same across all three), but more strokes for a small icon is a bad idea regardless
david_allison 2y ago
* Use 文Ａ, and ensure you can navigate to the menu only via symbols * The first element should be "use default/system language" * Language names should be displayed untranslated: "Deutsch, English, français" * Optionally display the language in the currently selected language
jimbobthrowawy 2y ago
I have also seen this icon on google translate, used to denote text. I wonder who came up with it first. Any time I've seen it, I have immediately guessed what it meant.
Nullabillity 2y ago
The flag representing the currently active language, typically.
thaumasiotes 2y ago
> Wikipedia uses a “文Ａ” icon; IMHO far better than a flag. It's not exactly suggestive of a language selector. 文 means "text". "A" doesn't mean anything at all.
- eloisius 2y ago
  At least to a Chinese reader it’s immediately obvious. 文 is the suffix to all written languages. 中文英文法文西班牙文 etc.
  - Jensson 2y ago
    Most people aren't Chinese readers.
nitwit005 2y ago
Salesforce translates (or did when I last used it) all the language and time zone options. If you switched to Japanese by accident, switching back was a bit of a challenge.
WirelessGigabit 2y ago
The 文 also appears in the Google Translate icon on iOS [0], which is why I always attributed it to a machine translation, not a version of the article written in another language by a human. [0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/google-translate/id414706506 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/google-translate/id414706506
mam2 2y ago
this is one of the most horrible design. there's at least 10 times where I had to look more than once to actually find this button

ReleaseCandidat 2y ago

> I don't know which of 语言设定 and 重置设备 will allow me to set the language back to English. That's why the languages should be presented in their "own" native form (name and alphabet), at least additionally. Which - using the native form and the translation in the current active locale - Apple does, btw., so at least on MacOS your problem does not exist.

greenish_shores 2y ago
The should be presented mainly, mostly and primarily in their native form. The form for currently set language should be additional. It's a no-brainer which makes demand for using flags unnecessary, almost making it absurd to use them. But, wait. 语言设定 is "Language settings" and 重置设备 is "Reset device". So the problem here is a bit different, right?
- ReleaseCandidat 2y ago
  Exactly, that's also how Apple (I'm starting to feel bad to constantly mention them) does it, the native form is "normal font face", the translated one is in lighter grey.
  - mintplant 2y ago
    The problem being posed by 'peterhi is not identifying a particular language in a language selection list. The problem is finding your way over to that language selection list in the first place when presented with a UI in a language you can't read. Imagine you land on a website with the language set to (say) Esperanto, how do you navigate through that to change the language to (say) English?
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  > So the problem here is a bit different, right? I wonder if flags fix that one in any way. It's the convention on sites to put the flags as a top-level element (but you could put "English" there just as easily). But on any device with a menu, the flags are usually only on the language list.

siva7 2y ago

You solve this by displaying the language in its original writing. So it's not swiss but Schwitzerisch!

sparky_z 2y ago
That doesn't help you figure out where to go to change the setting, unless you want to list all the available language options at the top of every single page.

huygens6363 2y ago

Agreed. Some flag, US, Chinese, I don’t care, signifies “language” in the context of software. That is an easy, universal UI pattern. I don’t see the need to upend this for some notion of offense or other type of PCness.

Ekaros 2y ago
Hmm, there are counter example Japanese flag on white background would signify nothing...
- huygens6363 2y ago
  That’s a design issue and a small and easily fixable one at that.
wongarsu 2y ago
Typically the flag of the current language setting
- lolinder 2y ago
  At which point you've now assigned flags to languages, with all of the problems that entails.
lolinder 2y ago
> some notion of offense or other type of PCness As just one example of what we're talking about, let's take Ireland: after generations of cultural oppression England caused a famine in Ireland that reduced the population by at least 20% between millions of deaths and millions of immigrants. Ireland still hasn't recovered its population to the pre-famine levels. The Irish are literally still recovering from their abuse at the hands of England. They speak English because England made it so through generations of deliberate cultural extermination. It's unreasonable for you to dismiss their desire to not identify themselves with the British flag as some "type of PCness".
- 2y ago

metafunctor 2y ago

A commonly used icon or symbol for language selection seems to be the globe symbol (U+1F310). HN seems to filter it away, though, so cannot use it in this comment.