You’ll say, Steve, this seems petty, and in the context of much larger issues, both state and national (heck, let’s add global), I’d agree. It’s not a high priority, but it is curious and, it has become quite the topic of discussion, so maybe we can help.
A quick survey of several NH State Government pages turned up something odd. Three flags in the upper left corner. China and France, and I have no clue what the third one (in the middle is).
The NH House page does, and it is clickable, and the NH Senate has it, but it is not (clickable). And they are all the same three flags.
The NH DOJ page has it too, and you can click on that.
They take you to the Langauge translation services pages. You can pick a language from a list or a link and maybe, there is a disclaimer; you can read these government portals in something other than American English.
I can think of many reasons to make people learn the native language, all of them available from every other nation on earth but ours, but if we’re going to do this, is this the best way?
Seriously, the Chinese flag is immediately visible in the upper left of the page? They hate us and want to ruin us, and would love to conquer us. Not all of them, but more than anyone will admit. A nation of individuals who, statistically, if they are here, are more likely to have some working knowledge of English already.
Maybe flags are just a bad idea?
That aside, and I’m honestly indifferent to that point, but it seems like an afterthought and a poorly thought out one at that, so I did a quick search and discovered “Flags are not Languages.com.” Guess what their position on using flags for this is?
Flags are not languages
When presenting links to content in different languages, consider the following:
Always use the name of the language in its local format
If you’re linking to pages in German and Chinese, label them as ‘Deutsch’ and ‘中文’ — not ‘German’ and ‘Chinese’.
They offer several simple suggestions that will – if it is truly your goal – make the multilingual experience easier on the non-English speaking person for you presumably are trying to assist.
Again, not the end of the world and hardly something of a priority, but if you are going to do it – and as one commenter noted, this looks like some site designers’ random throw-away solution – take some time to do it right. Google is doing all the heavy lifting, so your side is not even all that involved.
And see if we can be consistent across the government web spaces? Again, probably another genius idea involving incompatible designs or themes, but someone who is probably getting paid to watch porn (speculation only) could probably find time to work on this.
The Governor’s Page already has this,
So, is it a work in progress?
Petty in the context of larger issues, sure, but it came up, and people wanted it explored, and we are going that.
Get the CCP flag off our websites, please. This is the Free State of NH, after all.
