Introduction to localization

Localization is the process of including assets to support multiple locales. A locale is the combination of a language and a country code. For example, en_US refers to the English language as spoken in the United States, and fr_FR refers to the French language as spoken in France. To localize an application for these locales, you would provide two sets of assets: one for the en_US locale and one for the fr_FR locale.

Locales can share languages. For example, en_US and en_GB (Great Britain) are different locales. In this case, both locales use the English language, but the country code indicates that they are different locales, and might therefore use different assets. For example, an application in the en_US locale might spell the word "color", whereas the word would be "colour" in the en_GB locale. Also, units of currency would be represented in dollars or pounds, depending on the locale, and the format of dates and times might also be different.

You can also provide a set of assets for a language without specifying a country code. For example, you can provide en assets for the English language and provide additional assets for the en_US locale, specific to U.S. English.

The AIR SDK provides an HTML Localization Framework (contained in an AIRLocalizer.js file). This framework includes APIs that assist in working with multiple locales. For details see Localizing HTML content.

Localization goes beyond just translating strings used in your application. It can also include any type of asset such as audio files, images, and videos.