Question

I have a question about Windows Phone localization. I checked culture and language support for windows phone, for English, there’s only English (United States) and English (United Kingdom). I also want to ad English support for Canada and Australia, so how can I do that? Also The display language setting in emulator only has English (United States) and English (United Kingdom) for English, so how can I test other English countries such as Canada and Australia? Thanks!

Fei

Answer 1

Windows Phone 7 has a limited support matrix right now for culture/language combinations. You can see this language support list on MSDN. I would recommend coding to en-CA for Canada if you desire it.

There’s some guidance on how to support non-supported languages in WP7 from Microsoft if you view “How do I localize for a language that isn’t supported?” section. You’re not going to like it though. Here’s the snippet of the steps.

1. Hard code your app to be written in the unsupported language, if you don’t plan on supporting more languages in the future. OR, create
   your default AppResources.resx file and put your unsupported language
   strings in there, if you plan on supporting more languages in the
   future or will support additional languages in your submission.

2. Set your neutral language to one of the supported display languages. For example, ‘English (United States)’.

3. On App Hub, you will be prompted to input metadata and a description for the neutral language you chose (for the above example,
   you’ll be prompted for English). You must include the following three
   items in the ‘Detailed description’ field to pass certification:

A note, such as ‘The language of this application is [unsupported
language name]’. This note must be written in the same language as the
neutral language. For example, if you chose ‘English (United States)’
as your neutral language, the note must be written in English (United
States). This note must be the first item in the ‘Detailed
description’ field. Your app description, in the same language as the
neutral language. Your app description, in the unsupported language.

I would also recommend sticking it in an en-CA file so you can easily swap to it if/when support comes.