Globalization and Localization

Globalization and Localization

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Globalization is the process of designing your application so that it is possible later to have it translated and support multiple cultures. So, here you might not even actually make any translations but are making the application ready for it. Once you have globalized your application and now want to translate it into a specific culture, the translation process is called localization.

 

To globalize your application, the most important change to be done is that instead of hard-coding things such as display strings, move them to resource files. You then can set the control properties by reading the resource files. When you want to localize your application, have the resources translated to the languages you want to support. This will be covered in detail in this article.

 

The Difference Between Culture and Language

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Culture consists of language plus the country/region. Culture is usually denoted by a combination of a two-letter lowercase code (called culture code) denoting the language and a two-letter uppercase code (called sub-culture code) denoting the country or region. For example, "de-DE" for German in Germany and "de-AT" for German in Austria (even though the language is the same, they are different cultures!).

 

    Note: A neutral culture is a culture that is associated with a language but not with a country/region, for example, "de" for German.

 

Culture affects not only things like which language a particular string is shown but also things like the date format used, the decimal separator, currency symbol, and so on.

 

Culture and UICulture

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In ASP.NET, you can set to two culture values: the Culture and UICulture properties.

The Culture value determines things such as date, number, currency formatting, and so on. For example, it is the Culture setting that decides whether the date is in the dmy format or mdy format and what names to use for the month and for numeric values what the decimal separator is.

The UICulture value determines which resources are loaded for the page. So, it controls things like which translated text to show. In most cases, you will set Culture and UICulture to the same culture.

 

Culture is set at the thread level by setting the CurrentCulture and CurrentUICulture properties of the thread. You either can set it directly or ASP.NET will set it for you.

 

Setting in Three Ways:

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1. Set it declaratively: In the web.config file or in the @Page directive in the page, you can specify the culture as shown:

 

web.config: <globalization uiCulture="es-MX" culture="en-US" />

@Page Directive: <%@ Page  UICulture="es-MX" Culture="es-MX" %>

 

2. From the client browser's language setting:

 

3. Set it programmatically: In most cases, you will need to give an explicit way on your Web site for the user to select their language of choice. In such cases, you need to set the culture programmatically. Set these in the InitializeCulture method for the page.

 

Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture =

   CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture(selectedLanguage);

Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture =

   new CultureInfo(selectedLanguage);

 

 

 

Thanks & Regards,

Arun Manglick

SMTS || Microsoft Technology Practice || Bridgestone - Tyre Link || Persistent Systems || 3023-6258

 

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