i18n for Chinese in .NET Framework 3.5

Well, I upgraded my development and production servers to .NET Framework 3.5.

I'm really not taking advantage of the .NET Framework 3.5 additions (lambda functions, LINQ) yet. Also, I haven't made a decision yet on LINQ vs. NHibernate. However, I've already made a significant time investment in NHibernate, so it would really take a lot of convincing to move to LINQ, unless there is a clear path for doing so from NHibernate.

I had noticed that on all the MSDN pages there was a little section that appeared as follows:

Figured it would be best to get on the latest version.

For the most part, the upgrade is painless. It was just a matter of downloading / running the .NET Framework 3.5 installer dotNetFx35setup from Microsoft. No code changes were required. However, one change I feel I should make, even though everything is still running is refactoring my project so that it uses the latest (and correct) Neutral Cultures for Simplified and Traditional Chinese. Here are the entries for both from the latest MSDN System.Globalization.CultureInfo documentation.

Culture/Language Name	Culture
zh-Hans	Chinese (Simplified)
zh-Hant	Chinese (Traditional)

I've had a bit of discussion with Shawn Steele on his blog about the latest .NET Framework changing Simplfied from zh-CHS to zh-Hans and Traditional from zh-CHT to zh-Hant. Although the old zh-CHS and zh-CHT are still supported, I don't want to use a deprecated method for getting to my RESX files.

Localization in ASP.NET

Working on my International BlogEngine.NET theme helped me round out my understanding of the System.Globalization namespace, specifically the nifty CultureInfo class.

I have been working with CultureInfo on a current project in order to display content in English and Chinese WITHOUT having to make multiple copies of each .aspx file. Originally, I had used this article (which coincidentally the author is localizing for Chinese): Localization in ASP.NET 2.0. This was a great help in getting started.

However, I learned a bit more while working on the International BlogEngine.NET theme (which made me go back to my current project and restructure a few things):

The key to understanding Internationalization in .NET is the CultureInfo class and how Cultures are named.

• Three important types of Cultures: Invariant, Neutral, and Specific. The Invariant is a default, and is represented by an empty String.
• Neutral Cultures are usually represented by a lowercase two-character String, such as en (English), fr (French), es (Spanish), and represent a language, with no information about location.
  
• Specific Cultures represent a language and a location and are usually represented by a lowercase-two character String (language), plus an uppercase two character String (Country), separated by a dash. Some examples include: en-GB (English, Great Britian), en-US (English, U.S.), fr-CA (French, Canada).
• The Culture Names for Chinese are a bit odd. zh-CHS represents Simplified Chinese, the form of written Chinese used by the mainland. zh-CHT represents Traditional Chinese, used by Hong Kong and Taiwan. There is no culture with the name of just zh to represent Chinese in general. I learned this the hard way when attempting to simplify the names of my Resource files (.resx files) so that they did not represent a specific culture and tried to use just zh for my Simplified Chinese, which needless to say did not work.
  
• There are a handful of other exceptions to be aware of.

Here is a table (pulled from MSDN):

Culture Name	Language-Country/Region
"" (empty string)	invariant culture
af	Afrikaans
af-ZA	Afrikaans - South Africa
sq	Albanian
sq-AL	Albanian - Albania
ar	Arabic
ar-DZ	Arabic - Algeria
ar-BH	Arabic - Bahrain
ar-EG	Arabic - Egypt
ar-IQ	Arabic - Iraq
ar-JO	Arabic - Jordan
ar-KW	Arabic - Kuwait
ar-LB	Arabic - Lebanon
ar-LY	Arabic - Libya
ar-MA	Arabic - Morocco
ar-OM	Arabic - Oman
ar-QA	Arabic - Qatar
ar-SA	Arabic - Saudi Arabia
ar-SY	Arabic - Syria
ar-TN	Arabic - Tunisia
ar-AE	Arabic - United Arab Emirates
ar-YE	Arabic - Yemen
hy	Armenian
hy-AM	Armenian - Armenia
az	Azeri
az-AZ-Cyrl	Azeri (Cyrillic) - Azerbaijan
az-AZ-Latn	Azeri (Latin) - Azerbaijan
eu	Basque
eu-ES	Basque - Basque
be	Belarusian
be-BY	Belarusian - Belarus
bg	Bulgarian
bg-BG	Bulgarian - Bulgaria
ca	Catalan
ca-ES	Catalan - Catalan
zh-HK	Chinese - Hong Kong SAR
zh-MO	Chinese - Macao SAR
zh-CN	Chinese - China
zh-CHS	Chinese (Simplified)
zh-SG	Chinese - Singapore
zh-TW	Chinese - Taiwan
zh-CHT	Chinese (Traditional)
hr	Croatian
hr-HR	Croatian - Croatia
cs	Czech
cs-CZ	Czech - Czech Republic
da	Danish
da-DK	Danish - Denmark
div	Dhivehi
div-MV	Dhivehi - Maldives
nl	Dutch
nl-BE	Dutch - Belgium
nl-NL	Dutch - The Netherlands
en	English
en-AU	English - Australia
en-BZ	English - Belize
en-CA	English - Canada
en-CB	English - Caribbean
en-IE	English - Ireland
en-JM	English - Jamaica
en-NZ	English - New Zealand
en-PH	English - Philippines
en-ZA	English - South Africa
en-TT	English - Trinidad and Tobago
en-GB	English - United Kingdom
en-US	English - United States
en-ZW	English - Zimbabwe
et	Estonian
et-EE	Estonian - Estonia
fo	Faroese
fo-FO	Faroese - Faroe Islands
fa	Farsi
fa-IR	Farsi - Iran
fi	Finnish
fi-FI	Finnish - Finland
fr	French
fr-BE	French - Belgium
fr-CA	French - Canada
fr-FR	French - France
fr-LU	French - Luxembourg
fr-MC	French - Monaco
fr-CH	French - Switzerland
gl	Galician
gl-ES	Galician - Galician
ka	Georgian
ka-GE	Georgian - Georgia
de	German
de-AT	German - Austria
de-DE	German - Germany
de-LI	German - Liechtenstein
de-LU	German - Luxembourg
de-CH	German - Switzerland
el	Greek
el-GR	Greek - Greece
gu	Gujarati
gu-IN	Gujarati - India
he	Hebrew
he-IL	Hebrew - Israel
hi	Hindi
hi-IN	Hindi - India
hu	Hungarian
hu-HU	Hungarian - Hungary
is	Icelandic
is-IS	Icelandic - Iceland
id	Indonesian
id-ID	Indonesian - Indonesia
it	Italian
it-IT	Italian - Italy
it-CH	Italian - Switzerland
ja	Japanese
ja-JP	Japanese - Japan
kn	Kannada
kn-IN	Kannada - India
kk	Kazakh
kk-KZ	Kazakh - Kazakhstan
kok	Konkani
kok-IN	Konkani - India
ko	Korean
ko-KR	Korean - Korea
ky	Kyrgyz
ky-KG	Kyrgyz - Kyrgyzstan
lv	Latvian
lv-LV	Latvian - Latvia
lt	Lithuanian
lt-LT	Lithuanian - Lithuania
mk	Macedonian
mk-MK	Macedonian - Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
ms	Malay
ms-BN	Malay - Brunei
ms-MY	Malay - Malaysia
mr	Marathi
mr-IN	Marathi - India
mn	Mongolian
mn-MN	Mongolian - Mongolia
no	Norwegian
nb-NO	Norwegian (Bokmål) - Norway
nn-NO	Norwegian (Nynorsk) - Norway
pl	Polish
pl-PL	Polish - Poland
pt	Portuguese
pt-BR	Portuguese - Brazil
pt-PT	Portuguese - Portugal
pa	Punjabi
pa-IN	Punjabi - India
ro	Romanian
ro-RO	Romanian - Romania
ru	Russian
ru-RU	Russian - Russia
sa	Sanskrit
sa-IN	Sanskrit - India
sr-SP-Cyrl	Serbian (Cyrillic) - Serbia
sr-SP-Latn	Serbian (Latin) - Serbia
sk	Slovak
sk-SK	Slovak - Slovakia
sl	Slovenian
sl-SI	Slovenian - Slovenia
es	Spanish
es-AR	Spanish - Argentina
es-BO	Spanish - Bolivia
es-CL	Spanish - Chile
es-CO	Spanish - Colombia
es-CR	Spanish - Costa Rica
es-DO	Spanish - Dominican Republic
es-EC	Spanish - Ecuador
es-SV	Spanish - El Salvador
es-GT	Spanish - Guatemala
es-HN	Spanish - Honduras
es-MX	Spanish - Mexico
es-NI	Spanish - Nicaragua
es-PA	Spanish - Panama
es-PY	Spanish - Paraguay
es-PE	Spanish - Peru
es-PR	Spanish - Puerto Rico
es-ES	Spanish - Spain
es-UY	Spanish - Uruguay
es-VE	Spanish - Venezuela
sw	Swahili
sw-KE	Swahili - Kenya
sv	Swedish
sv-FI	Swedish - Finland
sv-SE	Swedish - Sweden
syr	Syriac
syr-SY	Syriac - Syria
ta	Tamil
ta-IN	Tamil - India
tt	Tatar
tt-RU	Tatar - Russia
te	Telugu
te-IN	Telugu - India
th	Thai
th-TH	Thai - Thailand
tr	Turkish
tr-TR	Turkish - Turkey
uk	Ukrainian
uk-UA	Ukrainian - Ukraine
ur	Urdu
ur-PK	Urdu - Pakistan
uz	Uzbek
uz-UZ-Cyrl	Uzbek (Cyrillic) - Uzbekistan
uz-UZ-Latn	Uzbek (Latin) - Uzbekistan
vi	Vietnamese
vi-VN	Vietnamese - Vietnam