Having 50+ languages in a menu might indeed be problematic. Wikipedia would list them all in the sidebar. Which works on wide monitors when you can’t use the full width for the main content anyway. (The measure should not exceed 80 characters per line.)
Especially on small devices you might want to hide the language menu (or part of it, showing the main languages covering a large part of the target audience and a clear indicator that there are more languages to chose from).
However, I still don’t think that a flag representing the language menu would be a good idea. Language–flag mismatch aside, your proposal indicates where you are (current language), not that there’s a way to somewhere else. But that’s what a marker should do: indicate that there are other options. Instead of a flag for the current language there should be an icon for other languages.
There had been an attempt to introduce such icon [http://www.globalbydesign.com/2009/04/23/is-this-the-next-language-icon/] but they failed, and right so. The best icon we have so far is a globe or map. It doesn’t clearly say ‘language menu’, rather vaguely ‘some kind of localization‘, but the user would figure out its meaning.
So I would go for a globe or map icon—not only for hidden language menus but also as an eye catcher on fully visible language menus. I should have mentioned this in my talk at Front-Trends.
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Having 50+ languages in a menu might indeed be problematic. Wikipedia would list them all in the sidebar. Which works on wide monitors when you can’t use the full width for the main content anyway. (The measure should not exceed 80 characters per line.)
Especially on small devices you might want to hide the language menu (or part of it, showing the main languages covering a large part of the target audience and a clear indicator that there are more languages to chose from).
However, I still don’t think that a flag representing the language menu would be a good idea. Language–flag mismatch aside, your proposal indicates where you are (current language), not that there’s a way to somewhere else. But that’s what a marker should do: indicate that there are other options. Instead of a flag for the current language there should be an icon for other languages.
There had been an attempt to introduce such icon [http://www.globalbydesign.com/2009/04/23/is-this-the-next-language-icon/] but they failed, and right so. The best icon we have so far is a globe or map. It doesn’t clearly say ‘language menu’, rather vaguely ‘some kind of localization‘, but the user would figure out its meaning.
So I would go for a globe or map icon—not only for hidden language menus but also as an eye catcher on fully visible language menus. I should have mentioned this in my talk at Front-Trends.