Foreword

It’s November 2024 and, until just now, Amazon's website for Spain has been available in only two languages: Spanish and Portuguese. This month they added support for English. Given Europe’s linguistic diversity — Spain alone has at least five official languages and Europe has dozens — it’s reasonable to ask why one of the world’s largest online companies supports only three languages.

Without support for their preferred languages, how many users face a frustrating barrier to accessing Amazon's products and services? If you’re running a business, limited language options can prevent you from fully engaging your audience, impacting everything from brand loyalty to revenue. Why not support dozens of languages, or at least a majority of the most widely-spoken ones? They certainly have the resources, and they do it in plenty of other countries.

The answer is that supporting lots of languages can be really, really hard. For website administrators, every new language adds a layer of complexity. Producing high-quality content and keeping it synchronized across multiple languages and countries is no small task.

And there’s a lot more to it than just translating text. Different locales organize text differently, format dates and numbers differently, have wildly different ways of writing addresses, use different units of measure and different currencies.

The challenges of building and managing applications and website that are both globally accessible and locally relevant are numerous, but they are solvable, and they are worth solving. And, believe it or not, solving them doesn't have to be difficult. If you've tried and found it frustrating, this book is for you.

There is a vast difference between managing a system that is purpose-built to support different regions and battling a system where localization was an afterthought. Adding support for new audiences and integrating it into your workflow should be straightforward, and with a well-designed system, it can be.

Overcoming these challenges requires a language-agnostic technology stack, with every tier, from the backend to the user interface, designed to support new audiences without changes to the core application code. The Onym Project is tackling these challenges head-on. By breaking down complex issues and offering practical implementation solutions, it equips you with the tools and insights to make your web applications accessible, relevant, and resonant worldwide.

The problems are solvable. Let’s get started.