A computer method localizes programming models. Given a model having one or more elements, each element has an element name, and each element name is in a language of an author of the model. For each element name, the invention method stores corresponding character strings (or string values) for generating the element name in different languages. During display of the given model in a certain locale, the present invention obtains the stored respective character strings of each element name in the language of the certain locale and uses the obtained character strings to display each element name in the language of the certain locale.