Run your business in the language you think in
Aquarius now works in 33 languages, end to end — talking to Aqua, every screen, and this blog. Not the menus translated and the work left in English. The whole thing, in the language you actually think in.
Andrew Beveridge3 min readOn this page
Most software is written in English and then, if you are lucky, translated at the edges. The menus get swapped out and the actual work stays in English. You end up running your business one step removed from how you would say it — writing quotes, chasing invoices and answering customers in a language you had to learn rather than the one you think in.
We did not want Aquarius to be that. As of this week, it is not.
Aquarius now works in 33 languages, end to end.
- The menus are in your language
- Your quotes, emails and books stay in English
- You work one translation removed from how you'd say it
- You talk to Aqua in your language
- Drafts come back in the language your customer reads
- Every screen — and this blog — in your language too
What “in your language” actually means
The important word is end to end. It is not the buttons translated and everything behind them still in English.
- You talk to Aqua in your language — by voice or by typing — and she answers in it.
- Every screen is translated: the chat, the Knowledge Map, settings, all of it.
- Even this blog is translated. If you are not reading this in English, you are reading a version that went live the moment the English one did.
You should be able to run your business in the language you think in, not the one you had to learn.
You do not have to set anything
When you open Aquarius, it looks at the languages your browser is already set to and starts there. If it guesses wrong, there is a language switcher — near the top of the page on a computer, at the bottom on your phone. Pick once and it stays picked.
The part that matters
The point is not that the words on the buttons are in your language. It is that the work is.
When you ask Aqua to draft a quote, it comes back in the language your customer reads. When she researches a supplier and hands you back what she found, you read it in the language you think in — not a translation of a translation. Nothing is quietly happening in English behind a translated label.
Why 33, and why now
Thirty-three is not a round number we picked for a headline. It is where “cover the people we actually serve” happened to land.
The list starts with the languages the most people speak — Mandarin, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, Portuguese — and keeps going down past the point most software stops: Vietnamese, Thai, Ukrainian, Greek, Catalan. It spans nine different scripts, and two of them — Arabic and Hebrew — read right to left, which means the whole layout flips, not just the words. That last part is the tell. Mirroring an entire interface is real work. It is exactly the corner you cut if you are only paying a language lip service.
We build for people running real businesses, and a lot of them do not run those businesses in English. Translating the marketing page and stopping there would have been the easy version, and the dishonest one — it reads like your language is welcome right up until you start working.
So the whole product moved at once, blog included. If we add a language later, everything comes with it on the same day.
Aquarius is in private beta. If you would like to try it — in any of the 33 languages — request access below.