Getting Started With .NET Localization

I have a dirty little secret to admit, and I hope you don’t think less of me for saying so. I have never localized any application that I’ve ever built. Phew, I feel better getting that off my chest. I like to think it’s something we’ve all done. We start our projects with the best intentions of helping as many users as possible, only to hardcode our labels, messages, and documentation. It begins innocently enough, “I’ll just hardcode it for now and come back to it later.” We never come back to “it”. Now we’ve limited the number of potential users we can help because we only target our native tongue. In this post, we’ll see how straightforward it is to add localization to any .NET application. Our code will be more readable, appeal to a broader userbase, and we’ll be better developers for taking the extra step of localization.