Multilingual button symbols?

I will soon be working on an application that will need to be deployed in
many countries.  Most will be European language, but there may be some
non-European at later stages.  Multi-language labelling and soforth is
planned and most of the design for that is already done.

But, this application will be deployed on small screens where real estate is
at a premium.  There will need to be navigation buttons that will be too
small to fit significant text on them.

For instance, there will be page forward and page back buttons to scroll
through lists.  A left arrow and a right arrow as symbols would be, I
assume, fairly universally understandable, at least with training and
documentation.  But what about a confirm button?  If this was English only,
I might just put "OK" on the button, or a green checkmark.  Would a green
checkmark work in other languages?  What about a cancel button-- would a red
X work?

Anyway, I am more interested in knowing if there are standards documents or
good recommendations on this as a general question-- are there a universal
set of symbols for this kind of thing that can be used?



--
joe larson
"Do, or do not: there is no try" - Yoda

"Joe W Larson" <joeSPAMNOTwlarson@hotmail.com> wrote:

> But, this application will be deployed on small screens where real
> estate is at a premium.  There will need to be navigation buttons
> that will be too small to fit significant text on them.

I'm afraid the software hasn't been designed very localizable then.
One of the simplest principles in localizability is that the lengths of
an expression may vary greatly by language.

> For instance, there will be page forward and page back buttons to
> scroll through lists.  A left arrow and a right arrow as symbols
> would be, I assume, fairly universally understandable, at least
> with training and documentation.

Why would a left arrow mean 'page forward'? After all, many languages
are written left to right, so to many people a left arrow would mean
'backward'. Moreover, for scrolling through a list that runs from top
to bottom (the most common direction), arrow down and arrow up might be
more natural.

> But what about a confirm button?
> If this was English only, I might just put "OK" on the button, or a
> green checkmark.  Would a green checkmark work in other languages?

What do you mean by "checkmark"? There is a Unicode character CHECK
MARK (a v-like special symbol), which often means that something has
been checked (selected), whereas in some cultures it is a traditional
symbol of a detected error (especially as a mark used by a teacher at
school when checking pupils' papers).

Iconic images are _not_ the way to go if you want to be international.

> What about a cancel button-- would a red X work?

What would you mean by a "cancel button"? I'm suspicious - so many
forms on Web pages contain a "cancel button" that is nothing but a
nuisance and an unnecessary risk. I think you should clearly express
the real effect of a button - and words are usually the way to go.

In any case, a red "X" could be taken as a selection mark (an item has
been checked, selected), or a symbol of a detected error, or something
else. Maybe as symbolizing 'unknown'.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/