Terminology

Microsoft's Internationalization Terminology

Internationalization (I18N)

An umbrella for the various stages in the process: world-readiness, localization, and customization.

World-Readiness

An umbrella term for all the functionality that developers must provide to complete their part of the internationalization process. This includes globalization, localizability, and customizability.

Globalization (G11N)

Globalization is the process of engineering an application so that it does not have cultural preconceptions.

Localizability

Localizability is the process of adapting an application so that its resources can be replaced at runtime.

Customizability

Customizability is the process of adapting an application so that its functionality can be replaced at runtime.

Localization (L10N)

Localization is the process of creating resources for a specific culture.

Customization

Customization is the process of creating a specific implementation of functionality.

You should be aware, however, that the rest of the industry does not adhere to these definitions. Primarily, the meanings of “internationalization” and “globalization” are transposed.

CultureInfo Hierarchy

Culture

A culture is a language and, optionally, a region. In the .NET Framework, it is represented by the System.Globalization.CultureInfo class.

CultureInfo objects are classified as either invariant, neutral, or specific, and operate in a simple hierarchy.