Common terms used in .Net, related to resource files

Culture

This is a combination of both language and cultural environment, including the format of dates, times, currencies, telephone numbers and so on. Every culture has a neutral culture that does not specify a region, for example “en” is the ISO code for the neutral English and “hi” is the code for Hindi culture. If the culture need to be specified for a particular region then the region suffix can be added, for example “en-US” is for English (United Status), “en-CA” for English (Canada).

Globalization

Globalization is the process of first internationalizing the application code, followed by localizing the application to other languages and cultures. This process allows translating, store, retrieving and presenting the application content for any culture, preferably without any change in the code base.

Localization

This means adapting the application to other locale by translating and formatting content according to culture, without touching the code. The end result of globalization is localization.

Satellite Assemblies

The resource data for the application can be compiled as a single DLL and can be accessed from the application. Such DLL’s are called satellite assemblies which will have only the resources. This also allows us share the resource with multiple applications.