What is a "localized message"?

I have seen in several languages that (especially exceptions) offer message and localised message methods. But it is not clear to me what the difference is - do any of the following apply?

  1. The localized message is for child classes to use. Why wouldn't they override the primary message?
  2. Is this a physical location thing where the same message may be presented based on things like locale, timezone, etc.

Furthermore when should the localized message be preferred over the regular message? Or conversely, not?

Jon Skeet
people
quotationmark

This one:

Is this a physical location thing where the same message may be presented based on things like locale, timezone, etc.

Although it's usually just locale / culture, really.

Basically imagine that an error message of "The value must be greater than 0" might be represented as "La valeur doit être supérieure à 0" for French developers (courtesy of Google Translate; may not be idiomatic as an error message).

This is just applying the general concept of localization (making your code communicate in the language/culture of your user) to a specific case of error messages though.

people

See more on this question at Stackoverflow