eLocale glossary

globalization
i18n
internationalization
l10n
locale
localization
new media
translation

locale

In the localization industry, locale is a more accurate way of referring to what is typically thought of as a language or dialect. To refer to a specific locale, a code is created using a combination of language codes and country codes from ISO standards ISO 639 and ISO 3166, respectively.

For example, British English would be referred to as either en-GB or en_GB, using the language code en for English and the country code GB for Great Britain. An optional variant can also be added to the end. For example, no_NO_B can be used to refer to the Bokmål dialect of Norwegian spoken in Norway. Finally, the standard or superset of a language can be defined by the language code itself, as in: de can be used to refer to Standard German.

See also localization