Could you add an option to display a language name or abbreviation rather than a specific country flag? The latter gets quite emotive for some people.

Obviously I can work around the flags at the moment by replacing the flag.png with a small image of the relevant letters, but it'd be nice to see this as an official option.

I appreciate that some language names themselves create issues in some parts of the world, but it's a better solution than a single country flag.

Using flags is of course not exact in some way but nevertheless widely used and understood.

I assume you speak of the front end. The language selector plugin called dynamic locale has an option to choose between flag list and a dropdown selector.

If you use the seo_locale plugin you can easily create a list with links to switch yourself.

Thanks, after some messing about, it seems that the zpMinimal theme doesn't honour the 'Use flags' option of the dynamic locale plugin. I'll have to put in a request with the author.

Though I'm not sure which my viewers will find worse between the flag or the country name, when neither of them is theirs.

We use those country names and the flag the language variant is translated in. Therefore the default English translation has an US flag and the name "(United States)" because Zenphoto is primarily an US project (the inventor and the Chief dev are) and not British, Canadian or Australian English.

There are several of these variants for many languages. For example I am German so my German translation is "German German" and not Austrian or Swiss.

So if you don't like the default, feel free to make your own custom plugin. That is how it is done.

The Translators have chosen the language and flag. Presumably because those match the way their translations were done. For instance, we use the US flag and US English because that is the English dialect that is displayed. Once there was a Brit who was working on a UK translation. But I presume he decided it was more work than worth since in general we understand each other's dialects.