This is also how localized special folder names (Documents, Pictures etc) work in Windows. And I think it's also the same in KDE and Gnome?

well, gnome creates folders in whatever language you installed with, tho it can translate the file manager's sidebar items, I think... so a change of locale means you'd still have the old dir left, and show as old name everywhere except the special shortcuts

Only in the search index... If you try to install your application in "C:\Program Files\" on a non-english version of windows, you'll have a bad time...

Not since Vista. These days, you'll always have "Program Files", and if you have the OS configured for a different locale, it'll create a hard link for the localized name. The Windows shell (including the standard file picker dialogs etc) will also use the localized name preferentially whenever it has to display a path that contains one of those folders, but still allows verbatim paths to be used wherever text input is allowed.

I use Swedish Windows, and here "C:\Program\" (the localization) and "C:\Program Files\" both work fine and go to the same place.

AppleScript, for all its faults, handled localization quite impressively. It parsed the whole script into an abstract representation, and could then could display it in another language as needed.

But none of those languages was a sane programming language.

The vocabulary doesn't matter when the grammar is an incomprehensible pidgin.

Apple script is the quintessential Jobsian "form, not function"

Sadly this feature never got used for making a better frontend to it :(

I think this is a good solution, but gmail also lets you create a filter based on a search. So if search is sensitive to the current locale, your filters could break changing the language. [Maybe filters made from searches against a localized label could be converted to language-neutral at storage time...]