changelog

Localization

May 1, 2025

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!

Updated on

May 1, 2025

Written by

Justin Duke

Justin Duke is a software engineer, lover of words, and the creator of Buttondown.