I have had experience of working with a EU project called Mercator (a
group that promotes accessibility and inclusion of minority and regional
languages).
I know from various meetings with them, that the whole "use a flag icon"
method of determining a language is considered to be discriminatory to
regions that speak a language but are not associated with it (how many
people here from the UK or Australia get miffed when "english" is
associated with a US flag??). They consider the whole concept of using
flags as a description of language bad practice and non-descript.
The preferred method of language selection is what has been mentioned
before, to inform the user of a language option using their own language
(eg. option link that say "English", "Francais", "Cymraeg").
My own thoughts are that it the showing the language choice simply by
showing the language should be more than sufficient as a description of
what functionality of link does. Using whole sentences such as "View
this Page in English", is fairly redundant as the native language itself
(one french word in a whole page of english) should be quite descriptive
enough as to what the expected function is.
Thanks,
David.
Matthew Pennell wrote:
On 6/30/06, *Steve Olive* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote:
I agree - another option is to use small icons that are flags of the
nations
associated with the destiny language
But (as per the link I posted above) languages are spoken in more than
one country. The name of the language, in that language, is the easiest
way of communicating the language options you have.
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