Is the English language a standard to describe a Webservice (Rest, SOAP Etc.)?

Question

In the current project where I'm working on, we had a discussion about the language (English or Spanish) we should use to describe pathnames, fields, payloads, Etc.

I thought this was an easy topic, however, I couldn't find an accurate source where is described that English should be the standard for describing Webservice's components.

For example, assume we have a Rest API very simple with CRUD for creating Users

English

POST /v1/users

GET /v1/users/{uid}

DELETE /v1/users/{uid}

PUT /v1/users/{uid}

Spanish

POST /v1/usuarios

GET /v1/usuarios/{uid}

DELETE /v1/usuarios/{uid}

PUT /v1/usuarios/{uid}

I think this is not a problem, however, I want to understand if I need to follow a standard or if it doesn't matter which language I use for describing Webservice's components.

Probably, this is a primarily opinion-based question, if you think it is, please just address me with a comment.

Answer 1

Being an Spanish native speaker myself, I see no technical justification to write an API in anything other than English, the de-facto technical language.

If the intention is to develop an API that is intractable to anyone outside of the Spanish-speaking world, I guess this would be the way to go.

Yet, I see this happens again and again among Spanish-speaking software projects. I think it is detrimental.

OTH, let us look at Rakuten, one of the most powerful tech companies in Japan. Rakuten decided to enforce English as the working language for all employees, even though the bulk of its business is in Japan.

It tells you something. In the globally connected 21st century world, aim your products for the widest audiences.

I cannot conjure an axiomatic reason to do so (in the way I would say "do not use goto statements.") But writing something in anything other than English is something I would not do.

Answer 2

I don't think there's a norm, but I'd simply say : there could be lots of way your code can be used by people with other language. So, sticking to english is the better way to let it understandable and usable by anybody.