Change Traditional Chinese language flag from HK to Taiwan

[taneki]

The majority of manhua on Mangadex with original language set to "Traditional Chinese" is from Taiwan, not Hong Kong. However, the interface currently uses the Hong Kong flag instead. While neither flag will be accurate for all Traditional Chinese manhua, using the Taiwanese flag will be far more accurate and cause less confusion.

This is evident for the two most popular Trad Chinese manhua on Mangadex: Retired Heroes and Modern MoGal. Their language flags suggest they were originally released in Hong Kong, but they are both in fact Taiwanese manhua.

I checked the country of origin for the 20 most popular manhua tagged as "Traditional Chinese" (according to number of views):
- 11 were from Taiwan (which is 65%, excluding the mistags below)
- 6 were from Hong Kong (note: 3 were part of the same series)
- 3 were mistagged and are Simplified Chinese / mainland China.

Edit: splitting Traditional Chinese into "Mandarin Chinese (Trad)" (zh-TW) and "Cantonese" (yue) would be a great if not better alternative, if this is possible with the current system

 

[Teddy]

I object...

Your points are valid, and I have no counterargument. I just like Hong Kong more than Taiwan personally. But Taiwan is pretty great too.

 

[Rongmario]

Based. Would be an excellent change.

 

[DjAlexDubCheck]

I agree, there should be two flags for HK and Taiwan

 

[BzzBzz]

Well, just because someone use X more than someone else doesn't make him "owner" of that X thing.

US population is about 330 mil. UK population is about 65 mil. But proper "english language" flag is still UK flag.

 

[taneki]

@BzzBzz
(Important background info: Traditional Chinese isn't actually a language but a writing system (like how Latin and Cyrillic alphabets are writing systems) to write two different languages -- Mandarin/"Standard Chinese" and Cantonese. We'll assume in this post that Taiwanese manhua will always use Mandarin, and Hong Kong manhua will always use Cantonese; both will be written in Traditional Chinese.)

From the example you gave, I'll assume your point is about a matter of convention. And it's safe to say that using the UK flag for English is a matter of convention. (As much as I don't like the idea of using flags for languages in the first place... )

In the context of Traditional Chinese, since we're dealing with two languages, I believe there's a convention of using the Taiwanese flag for Mandarin and Hong Kong flag only for Cantonese. Since there are more Mandarin manhua in Trad Chinese than Cantonese manhua in Trad Chinese on Mangadex (because no. of Taiwanese manhua > Hong Kong manhua), there is still good reason to switching to the Taiwanese flag.

P.S.: If it's technologically feasible, I would definitely support separating Traditional Chinese into "Traditional Chinese (Mandarin)" and "Traditional Chinese (Cantonese)" instead. The suggestion of changing the existing flag is based on the assumption that this alternative suggestion is not possible.

 

[justforthelulz]

Tangentially related question: is MangaDex accessible in Mainland China?

 

[taneki]

Yup still accessible in mainland China (surprisingly enough), who knows how popular it is there though!

 

[doppler]

I don't want to get geo-political but China still considers Taiwan part of mainland China. It's only a matter of some event or time they will go to war over it. A lot of companies and nations have gotten on China's shit list. It's the little things that sets China off too. Even now China rejects Taiwan to be part of the United Nations. (permanent veto power of China)

So a little thing as changing the flag from Taiwan authors to Taiwan's flag from China's. Could very well set them off. And to think they would not find out is very naive. Mangadex has enemies and trolls. Mangadex could very well be censored from China. Accessible now would become very moot.

IMHO, China will eventually fall just like Russia did. China is only being held together by duct tape. When the Government (politicians) and Military don't see eye-to-eye that's when it falls apart. The citizens will be the catalyst of change. COVID-19 events in China maybe the seed of change. The world is in a lot of hurt now, and things doesn't look to get better soon.

/off the box.