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internationalizationlocale

Is there a naming convention for locale-specific static files?

I have some static resources (images and HTML files) that will be localized. One piece of software I've seen do this is Apache, which appends the locale to the name; for example, test_en_US.html or test_de_CH.html. I'm wondering whether this naming scheme is considered standard, or whether every project does it differently.

Solution

  • While there is no documented standard for naming Localized files, I'd recommend using the format filename[_language[ _country]] where

    • language is the ISO-639 2 letter language code
    • territory is the ISO-3166 2 letter country code

    For example:

    • myFile.txt (non-localized file)
    • myFile_en.txt (localized for global English)
    • myFile_en_US.txt (localized for US English)
    • myFile_en_GB.txt (localized for UK English)

    Why? This is the most typical format used by operating systems, globalization tools (such as Trados and WorldServer), and programming languages. So unless you have a particular fondness for a different format, I see no reason to deviate from what most other folks are doing. It may save you some integration headaches down the road.