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I am starting a new application in WPF and I am curious how to handle Localization? In WinForms you can use resx strings for the UI text, how is this done in WPF? Is there a special binding syntax for binding to resx resources or is there a different way of doing this?


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6 Answers 6

up vote 16 down vote accepted

Check out http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms788718.aspx. The article explains nicely how localization in WPF works.

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Unfortunately you still have to use the command line a lot. But I read that it will improve as WPF grows older. Does anybody know if there will be any improvements with VS 2010? –  weiqure Apr 27 '09 at 20:05
No improvement in VS 2010 :( –  Andrei Rînea Jul 9 '10 at 10:44
You can use tools like TxTranslation (dev.unclassified.de/source/txlib) that provide easy localisation of XAML and code-behind and include a nice GUI translation editor. No command line needed. –  LonelyPixel May 26 at 19:51

Here is another article about WPF localization with the "old" stable ResX files:

Best Practices: Localize a WPF application

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There is a good article on codeproject explaining how to do WPF localization using RESX files:


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you can use a MarkupExtension to do localization with dynamic language switching. Here is an interesting article about this:


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Another possibility can be found here:


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I found very easy to start WPF localization with VS template, described in authors blog.

Project created using this template already contains all the necessary tools for localization, as well as the maximum automates the localization process. During application development, you add a new XAML file without having to worry about localization. Upon completion of the changes simply build project and change default language to translated.

Download template

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Could you list the steps one by one? I couldn't get it to use the language other than English. Particularly, should I translate by editing the csv file, or the StringResources.xml file? Do I do anything to the form view? –  lulalala Mar 9 at 15:12

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