Localization is the process of adapting a software application for a specific locale.  It is defined as the process of creating and configuring an application for supporting a specific language or locale.  Globalization is defined as the process of identifying the specific portion of the application that needs to be different for different languages and how to isolate them from the application's core. Therefore, it is the process of identifying the localizable resources of the application.

The Microsoft .NET library provides support for globalization and localization using the following namespaces.

·         System.Globalization

·         System.Resources

·         System.Text

·         System.Threading

The System.Globalization namespace provides support for developing multilingual applications in Microsoft .NET by allowing the developers to define culture specific information.  The sections that follow discuss cultures and how to work with them in .NET.  The System.Resources namespace provides support to create, store and manage various culture-specific resources used in an application.  It contains a class called ResourceManager that allows access to resources either from the main assembly or those that are present in Satellite Assemblies.  We will discuss both ResourceManager and Satellite Assemblies in more detail later in this article.  The System.Text namespace provides support for representing various character encodings like ASCII, Unicode, UTF-7 and UTF-8.  The System.Threading namespace contains classes and interfaces that provide support for multithreaded programming.