Supporting multiple human languages

Question

I am thinking about my final year project and the possibility of supporting multiple languages, e.g. English, Welsh, German etc..

Is there a standard way of supporting multiple human languages in a program?
What is the recommended file format for storing the different languages?

It is something I am clueless on but is obviously a very common feature, So any advice is welcomed.

I am most familiar with c++ using mfc for UI applications, currently learning Qt. So an answer with this bias in mind would be good.

(Sorry if this has been covered before, but searching for 'Languages' on SO returns streams of programming language related questions)

Answer 1

If you wanted to browse on StackOverflow for ideas you could try the internationalization, i18n, localization and l10n tags.

("i18n" == "internationalisation" because "nternationalizatio" is 18 letters. Same for localization and l10n.)

Answer 2

Apart from the already made suggestions of internationalization and localization, another term you might want to research is "Unicode".

Answer 3

As for MFC you could use resource DLLs as described here. One of portable solutions will be using gettext library.