Globalization is a process of designing and developing software in such a way that it can be used in multiple locales with some minimal modifications to the software. The software changes the locale-specific information, to provide information to the user based on the configured locale of the operating system.
Globalization involves two processes, internationalizing the application code and localizing the application to other languages and cultures. The internationalization process includes steps to translate, store, retrieve, and present application content for any locale, using the same application code base. A locale is a combination of both language and cultural environments, including the format of dates, times, currencies, telephone numbers, and so on.
The internationalization process of globalization enables to you to remove all content from the presentation layer and from the code base. Only a single code base and a single presentation layout will present content for any culture. This process also enables you to place the content in a location that can be easily translated and that will be programmatically accessible to populate the presentation layer. In addition, the internationalization process allows storing content and user input in a format that can be presented with integrity for the appropriate culture. The internationalization of the application makes the application ready for localization.
The localization process of globalization enables your application to adapt to other locales by translating and formatting content according to culture, without any change in the code. This process also enables removal of any bugs introduced by internationalization, such as accidentally translated file or field names.
The globalization process also includes culture information of the locale where the software will be used. The culture information is a combination of language and the location. Working with culture information requires namespaces. The namespaces available in .NET are System.Globalization, System.Resources and System.Threading.
The System.Globalization namespace contains classes that define culture-related information which includes language, country or region, calendars, the date format, currency, numbers, and the sort order for strings. These classes are useful for writing globalized (internationalized) applications. Classes like StringInfo and TextInfo provide advanced globalization functionalities, such as surrogate support and text element processing. The System.Resources namespace contains classes and interfaces that allow developers to create, store, and manage various culture-specific resources used in an application. The System.Threading namespace contains classes and interfaces that enable multithreaded programming. The classes of this namespace enable synchronization of thread activities and access to data.
To access online version of the above article, please go to http://www.dotnet-guide.com/globalization.html
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