As far as I can tell, my first public promise to localize Buttondown was at the end of 2020:
Internationalization, which is 80% done and, as the prophecy goes, only requires another 80% left to be ready to ship.
Well, it is only around four and a half years later, and we've finally shipped it. Buttondown is now officially localized in the following languages, with more to come:
- English
- French
- German
- Spanish
- Turkish
- Portuguese (Brazil)
- Dutch
- Polish
Both in terms of wall clock time and engineering effort, this has probably been one of the most substantial efforts made to Buttondown in its entire history. As such, I ask that you permit me a brief cornucopia of self-indulgence:
- All the credit in the world to Tanvir, who did a phenomenal job of leading the charge on this and succeeding where I failed in 2020 (and 2021, and 2022, and 2023..). Coordinating and handling localization in medias res for an application with as many surfaces as Buttondown has is no small feat.
- We've been working with great beta users and soft-launch discoverers over the past few months, and I can't thank you all enough for your patience and feedback (and, most importantly, your strings).
- Almost 20% of Buttondown's traffic (in terms of unique web visitors and outbound emails sent) is already from non-English speakers, which is a testament to the hard work of Tanvir and the rest of the team and just kind of a cool thing to see in its own right.
You can read more about the localization effort in the docs!