Multilingual Application in ASP.NET MVC - Best Practices?

Question

I'm developing a web application using ASP.NET MVC (I'm new to the framework and actually quite new to web development in general). My application must support multiple languages - there's a bunch of countries for which I need the application to "speak" the local language.

The UI concept is common - have flag icons somewhere, usually the top, possibly with an additional drop-down to include less common languages. At this stage I don't want to get into automatically detecting the source country, but rather start with English and allow users to choose otherwise (and I would remember that setting of course).

I would like to know if there's any "framework" for supporting such multilingual views in ASP.NET MVC that will make the job easier.

Any recommendations?

Thanks

I would dump the flag icons. Flags can change, some languages span multiple countries, etc. Flag icons for language selection is kind of old-school. Instead, have a dropdown with each language selection displayed in its own language. — Mike Sickler
– Mike Sickler, Commented Jun 23, 2009 at 13:27
I disagree. Having flags for your most commonly used languages saves a click and potential confusion. How would I know how to change the language if I landed on the page after someone changed it to arabic? The drop-down title wouldn't be "Select a language" anymore. — PRINCESS FLUFF
– PRINCESS FLUFF, Commented Aug 1, 2009 at 13:34

aynber · Accepted Answer · 2025-04-08 15:46:45Z

6

Check out these links: first second third

Worked for me. In view - HtmlHelper.Resource("greeting"); in controller - this.Resource("greeting");
in model i got my own localization implementation.

Make sure You check out this approach when considering localization implementation.

edited Apr 8 at 15:46

aynber

23.2k9 gold badges57 silver badges69 bronze badges

answered Jun 22, 2009 at 13:28

Arnis Lapsa

47.6k30 gold badges119 silver badges198 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

2 Comments

Roee Adler Over a year ago

It's very surprising that SO's search (or more precisely Microsoft's full-text search) did not find these questions... Apparently my use of "multilingual" was too much for it when it needs to be matched with "multi-lingual"... Thanks

Arnis Lapsa Over a year ago

I remember that one guy implemented localization by creating separated views for each language. That could be useful for more specific languages (i.e. Japanese), but would involve some serious routing ("Areas" technique by Phil Haack might work, check out @ google).

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Multilingual Application in ASP.NET MVC - Best Practices?

1 Answer 1

2 Comments

Your Answer

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

2 Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Linked

Related