Display of language lists: what language should I use?

Question

From time to time I come across a list of available languages, and every time I ask myself:

Is it better to display the language in:

• selected language
• English
• in the language according to the button / list item

Examples:

• English
• Deutsch
• French

or

• English
• Deutsch
• Français

Is there any agreement that needs to be used more politely or better in any other way? Are there any other options?

Answer 1

I definitely think you should display in a language that matches the item in the button list.

Causes:

• If this is not the language that interests you, you will not mind if you do not understand it, if you can find your own language.

• Think about the last time you called customer service. How many times have you heard something like "Para Espanol, marque dos"? A very common accepted practice of mixing different languages ​​in one user interface (whether visual or audio).

• Think about how you would feel if you went to a Spanish site and you couldn't find your language under “E”. Maybe, in the end, you would notice "Ingles" and think that it probably translates to "English", but it is definitely better to save the user the problems of translation and the mental alphabet.

Answer 2

I would say that it is best to display the language in "your own language" (option number 3). You cannot expect the user to recognize the selected language and not expect him to learn English.

What difficulty lies in how to display the "Select Language" button in a neutral language. I usually use a flag denoting the current language, as this tends to receive the message through the event, although there is not always a 1: 1 mapping between the country and the languages.

Answer 3

The standard (in both senses of the word, that is, what is actually used in the real world, and what IETF / W3C / ISO says) is to use ISO 639-1 Alpha-2 language codes. It may be supplemented either by the full name of the language in English, or by the language itself, or by the Romanian transliteration of the name in the language itself, or in any combination thereof.

So, to save your example:

• [de] German - German
• [ru] English
• [fr] French - Français
• [ja] Japanese - 日本語 (Nihongo)

Answer 4

I find it harder to find "Magyar" in the list of languages.

Since there are languages ​​with a non-Latin character set, this is not a simple search in the first letter, because I lose focus when I first meet one of them.

Where should I look? In "M" - Magyar? But where is M? EDIT: M in the alphabet (current language), not on the keyboard.

Look at this (from Wikipedia):

• Bulgarian - I know, this is Bulgarian, but
• བོད་ ཡིག - what is it?
• Bosan
• barter
• Česky
• Dansk
• Deutsch
• Ελληνικά

I would prefer something like this:

• A ...
• B ...
• C ...
• .
• .
• Hungarian (Magyar)

If the user interface was Japanese, I would add ctrl + f-ing "Magyar".

Answer 5

Name in English:

Pros:

• Predictable sorting.
• No need to think about different streams of text.

Minuses:

• Users who do not speak English can find a more complex search for their language.
• If the rest of the application is translated, it may look sloppy or grammatically incorrect: Ditt språk är English / votre langue est English .

Language in its own name:

Pros:

• Easier for a non-English speaker.
• You should think about coding and text stream; Useful exercise .:-)

Minuses:

• It is more difficult to navigate if the user is used to the English language or is configured to search for an English name.
• You must consider all language options.

Which really depends on the rest of your application. You might want to consider translating all languages ​​into all languages. If English is selected, you can choose from:

• English
• Swedish
• French

If Swedish:

• English and
• Svenska
• Franska

... and French:

• English
• Suédois
• Français

But then the translation problem turned from O(n) to O(n^2) , which may be acceptable depending on what your current n value is.

EDIT

As the deceze says. you will also have to handle the case when the user accidentally switches to a language that she does not understand and provides a way back - for example, always including several major languages.

Answer 6

Two options: first, the name of the language in the selected language version or English, and then the name of the language itself between the parsers or vice versa:

• English
• French (Français)
• German (German)
• Spanish (Español)

or

• English
• Français (French)
• Deutsch (German)
• Español (Spanish)

Answer 7

No matter what you do, do not use the IP address to set the language.

Google is very annoying about this - when I enter a new place, I get google in the local language and script. This is especially annoying, especially in southeastern Croatia.

The worst offender is Microsoft. When you try to purchase software, your servers constantly switch languages ​​depending on your location and in many cases make it impossible to pay by credit card, as addresses and postal codes, etc. They are checked in the local format, and not where your credit card was issued (By the way, the first four digits of the credit card number indicate the issuing institution, which is tied to a specific country, therefore, it is not necessary to launch a scientific rocket to develop a postal code format in the UK, not six-digit German postcode.

Answer 8

Use country flags in combination with the name of the language in that language (Deutsch, Francais, Nederlands, ...).

Answer 9

I don’t know about any programming conventions about this, but I would rather see the name of the language in my own language. For example:

• English
• Turkçe
• Deutsch

Answer 10

Look at your regional settings.

Here's how it implemented Microsoft. It looks like your version is 1.

alt text http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/1c14f9f60d.jpg