• The name of the culture.
• The writing system.
• The calendar used.
• Other culture specific information such as date and currency formats.

The CultureInfo class requires that a culture code be passed to its constructor on creation.

• The culture code can be passed as a string or an int.
• The string for a culture code generally looks like: en-us. The first two characters specify the language and the last two specify the region. In this case the language is English and the region is the United States.

CultureInfo culture =
System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture;

The CurrentCulture Property also allows setting the CurrentCulture programmatically. For example:

CultureInfo culture = new CultureInfo("en-us");
System.Threading.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = culture;

The default setting is the user’s Locale set through the Regional Options applet in the Control Panel.

txtNonGlobalized.Text = "$5,000";

To globalize this data, use the ToString method passing the formatting character. The following example displays the value 5000 as currency (the system will format the display based on the current culture).

txtGlobalized.Text = (5000).ToString("C");

• Localization uses resource files (*.resx) to hold the language, culture, and locale-specific contents.
• The resource files are used to populate the text properties for the controls on the user interface for a particular language and culture.
• In addition to storing text, resource files can also store icons and graphics that are specific to different regions or cultures.
• The correct resources will be loaded at runtime based on the CurrentUICulture.

The following steps outline how to localize a form.

1. Create the default culture version.
2. Set the form’s Localize property to true.
3. Set the form’s Language property to the desired language.
4. Modify the form for the specified language by changing text and moving, adding, or deleting controls.
5. Build the application. This will create the corresponding .resx files.

When the application runs, the appropriate resources will be loaded for the CurrentUICulture.