# Internationalization and localization

Internationalization (i18n) refers to the process of extracting strings from source code and presenting them as properties with a set of values.

Localization (l10n) is the process of translating values of these properties into target languages.

Keys and values for the target languages are stored in dedicated [properties files](properties-files.html), which can be combined into a [resource bundle](resource-bundle.html) for convenience. IntelliJ IDEA can recognize [hard-coded string
literals](hard-coded-string-literals.html) in Java code and suggest extracting them into the corresponding properties files.