#1,113 – Use of Cultures in Internationalization

When localizing an application or running a localized application, you’ll work in the context of a particular culture.  A culture can be thought of as the combination of a particular language and the country or region where the language is being spoken.

A developer targets one or more cultures when localizing an application.  For example, he might translate text in the application for the German-spoken-in-Austria culture or the English-spoken-in-the-UK culture.

Cultures are also used at run time.  A user runs an application within an environment that represents a particular culture.  This culture is then used by the application to determine which strings to load.

A culture that includes both a language and country/region indicator is known as a specific culture.  (E.g. French/Canada).  You can also work with neutral cultures, which are defined by a language but without a specific country.  (E.g. French)