Remove language selection flags to solve some problems

[SumiHeart]

In the language selection interface, some specific language flags may cause some players disagree, so I hope that the language flags can be remove, or the flags of all languages can be removed.

What is the problem?
As ccw said:

Flags make the language selection menu look pretty, but there are problems with flags other than Taiwan.

Also as described on the related website:

Remember Flags are not Languages

Some scripters think that it has nothing to do with them, but this is limited to them. Maybe scripters in other relevant countries want host servers today, but their players may care about this matter, but they just didn't express their opinions.

What to do next:
Face reality, more and most modern games or websites have long abandoned flags and only use text or simple icons instead.

Maybe flags make the interface look better, but I hope you can try switching places with the people who care about it.

[Dutchman101]

Note that this issue builds upon a discussion in PR #2151

that the language flags can be remove

In my opinion we should be speaking of "flag" instead of "flags", namely we could remove a flag display from zh-TW (taiwanese) language in order to solve any political disagreements on which flag to use.

"flags" implies that you want both the Chinese flag (for zh-CN, chinese language selection) and any of such use for zh-CN removed. This seems unreasonable to me, as China is also a country with a significant amount of MTA players, and they do like to use the feature of language selection with flags. Bottom line, the use of the Chinese flag for mainland China has nothing to do with the entire Taiwanese debate, and therefore we should leave the Chinese flag on zh-CN alone. It is a flag that belongs to that country, which unlike for Taiwan isn't subjected to debate.

Now on to something else that annoys me about this matter..

or the flags of all languages can be removed for the consistent and neat layout

The easily accessible language selection menu is useful and a well-appreciated feature for MTA users around the world. Having flags in that menu (right from the landing page) adds significantly to the user experience and usability of this feature.

Now are we really about to reduce or eliminate that because of some long toes in the world, for people being offended due to something political that pertains to only 1 or 2 countries? I don't think so. We can resolve the issue at hand (related to Taiwan) by doing something like removing the Chinese flag from Taiwan, if we even feel persuaded to do so at all, but to remove an entire feature that serves many countries in the world goes too far in my eyes.

The issue at hand is already nitpicky, so if we were to make Taiwan flagless to satisfy people with long toes, then there's nothing else to warrant 'balancing for a consistent and neat layout' (the presence of 1 country without a flag, in the languages overview) with such an ultimate step as removing the entire languages menu. Then it's give or take, just to do nothing else to it. The issue isn't worth the measure, so as to say. If some people really can't live with the languages menu then being less neat, we can always opt to remove the Taiwanese language from the overview, if really needed.

[SumiHeart]

as China is also a country with a significant amount of MTA players, and they do like to use the feature of language selection with flags.

Just ask for this content:
Do you know how many Chinese people still playing MTASA? and how do you know about that?

thank you.

As I know,all mta forum in China,almost people left,just like a deserted city.
yes maybe they played before,but please,turn one’s back on the fact,better way to make mta more better,why not?

[ccw808]

Flags make the language selection menu look pretty, but there are problems with flags other than Taiwan.
e.g. Players in Ireland, Australia etc might not like having to select the British flag. The Arabic flag is represented by KSA but Arabic is spoken in many other countries. Similar issues with Spanish, French, German etc
https://www.google.com/search?q=localizarion+flags

[xLive]

Flags make the language selection menu look pretty, but there are problems with flags other than Taiwan.
e.g. Players in Ireland, Australia etc might not like having to select the British flag. The Arabic flag is represented by KSA but Arabic is spoken in many other countries. Similar issues with Spanish, French, German etc
https://www.google.com/search?q=localizarion+flags

The Arabic language is not represented by any country in MTA

Arabic is called "the language of ض (Dhad)" because it's the only language that has that letter.

[Disinterpreter]

Flags make the language selection menu look pretty, but there are problems with flags other than Taiwan.
e.g. Players in Ireland, Australia etc might not like having to select the British flag. The Arabic flag is represented by KSA but Arabic is spoken in many other countries. Similar issues with Spanish, French, German etc
https://www.google.com/search?q=localizarion+flags

But we have different translations for these languages. 🤔 The flags can be different too.

The same if we would have American English and British English. I saw this difference few times, they had different flags.

[patrikjuvonen]

Show chinese flag on taiwan for chinese (china) language users 😆

[AlexTMjugador]

But we have different translations for these languages. thinking The flags can be different too.

The same if we would have American English and British English. I saw this difference few times, they had different flags.

The problem with that idea is that MTA has nowhere near the same amount of regional variants of a language than countries that speak such language in many cases. For instance, MTA has a single Spanish localization, and it's represented by the flag of Spain, while Spanish is also spoken in a bunch of countries in Latin America and even in the United States to some extent. The China/Taiwan situation at hand just makes this even worse, as those countries do not formally agree on their political status.

Do you know how many Chinese people still playing MTASA? and how do you know about that?

MTA collects player stats that, IIRC, count how many players come from what region. But such detailed information is not publicly accessible, though.

I agree with @ccw808 point. Flags make the language selection menu prettier, but I think that, objectively, the best way to represent languages that doesn't favor one country over another or takes part in any political debate is just to get rid of them, and that approach seems to be accepted in the GUI design community.

Edit: perhaps a relatively easy solution to these problems that wouldn't require to change the layout of the language selection menu is to substitute all the flags with generic text icons that contain the ISO language code, like this (image and idea brutally copied from this Stack Exchange answer):

This way the menu would still look somewhat pretty, while avoiding these kind of issues altogether.

[PlatinMTA]

Is this really a problem outside the thing with China and Taiwan? That issue is mostly political more than anything else.

If we really wanted to make everyone feel at home with the languagues (even tho I had never seen a single spanish speaking user be upset because the lang flag is the Spanish one instead of <insert country here>) we could do the dafont.com approach, which is:

Use the IP location and change the flag depending on your current country. For example:

1. I am from Uruguay
2. Do a geoIP check
3. See that I'm from an Spanish speaking country
4. See that is Uruguay
5. Change the Spanish flag for the Uruguayan flag
6. There are no more flag problems

No one is ever going to be mad because their country flag is the one that is representing their first languague, instead they would find it neat that the game recognices their location and changes their flag so they feel more at home.

If think this isn't really an issue. It's usually common to use the British flag for english because it's were the english languague was form, and you can go back in the history of that nation until you find the birth of that languague. Same for Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, is just a nit-picking issue. However this is not so nit-picking with Taiwan and China , because it has real implications with actual politics, which MTA shouldn't take an stance on. I think that the solution dafont.com has for this issue is the ideal for solving this flag dispute, at least in the chinese speaking community.

[LosFaul]

specially because of political reasons, flags shouldn't be used for language selection at all

[Disinterpreter]

Is this really a problem outside the thing with China and Taiwan? That issue is mostly political more than anything else.

If we really wanted to make everyone feel at home with the languagues (even tho I had never seen a single spanish speaking user be upset because the lang flag is the Spanish one instead of ) we could do the dafont.com approach, which is:

Use the IP location and change the flag depending on your current country. For example:

1. I am from Uruguay

2. Do a geoIP check

3. See that I'm from an Spanish speaking country

4. See that is Uruguay

5. Change the Spanish flag for the Uruguayan flag

6. There are no more flag problems

No one is ever going to be mad because their country flag is the one that is representing their first languague, instead they would find it neat that the game recognices their location and changes their flag so they feel more at home.

If think this isn't really an issue. It's usually common to use the British flag for english because it's were the english languague was form, and you can go back in the history of that nation until you find the birth of that languague. Same for Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, is just a nit-picking issue. However this is not so nit-picking with Taiwan and China , because it has real implications with actual politics, which MTA shouldn't take an stance on. I think that the solution dafont.com has for this issue is the ideal for solving this flag dispute, at least in the chinese speaking community.

yes, but besides the flags we have different translation for Taiwan and China 🤔

[PlatinMTA]

yes, but besides the flags we have different translation for Taiwan and China 🤔

Show only the translation for Taiwan for Taiwan users, show only the translation for China to Chinese users.* As Dutchman said, the flags, apart from being neat, are helpful for users arround the world. It would suck to have that feature removed because of politics.

* If this cant be done (i know that some dialects cant really understand each other), then patrik already gave a solution. Even if it was joking it would certanly work.

Show chinese flag on taiwan for chinese (china) language users 😆

[Dutchman101]

I agree with Platin, besides the china-taiwan issue (which in my eyes is actually an issue, yes) everything else is probably worthless to change, as who would get offended because their language is represented by the flag of a bigger or origin country using that language (e.g KSA for Arabic, France for French, etcetera). We haven't gotten any of such complaints from users before, so you can deduce that barely anyone to no one is getting offended.. all we would know is that they care to just easily find their own language, knowing it's probably under the flag of the most known country to speak it.

And if not so, they can just leave the selection menu on the landing page behind and go into options to select their language without dealing with any flags. It's an use or don't use scenario. Besides, that especially for people that have trouble understanding the menu language right after installing MTA, a flags menu on the landing page is intuitive to get them on the right track, to avoid any pain or failure of navigating all the way to Settings

[AlexTMjugador]

@PlatinMTA's approach is okay with me, but I find it somewhat complex when we could just opt to not use flags at all, which are not meant to represent languages anyway, and aligns with current GUI design practices. All of this without changing a single line of code.

I really wonder if the menu navigability and user expectations are going to be impacted negatively enough to justify using flags instead of another visual representation. Do we have any hard data about this? In this issue it seems that there's not a clear majority or consensus, and maybe such data can allow us to make a better decision.

[LosFaul]

first of all a lot websites and software offer this two types of chinese:

• Chinese (Simplified)
• Chinese (Traditional)

also lot of websites/software make a scrollable list without flags
for example:

• ...
• English (UK)
• English (US)
• French (Français)
• German (Deutsch)
• Spanish (Español)
• ...

geoIP can also go sometimes wrong