The present invention discloses a software solution for localization/globalization of software applications. Localization refers to a language specific version of globalized software. The invention can generate externalized language specific files that are decoupled from source code, while alleviating many mistakes and problems inherent in legacy localization methodologies. That is, the invention provides an end-to-end framework that automatically replaces source code strings with placeholders, which are linked to national language (NL) specific strings of a target language. During build time, an executable can be generated that is customized for the target language. The original source code remains unchanged, which makes the globalization process described transparent to software developers. Further, the placeholders are automatically generated for each build, which resolves many problems with manually specifying keys that replace text, such as orphaned keys, duplicate keys, and the like.