A method and system that facilitates localization of objects in markup language documents so that a single set of markup language documents (the set including one or more documents) provide support for displaying portions of the documents in a language selected from among a plurality of different languages. Localized objects are included within in markup language documents through the use of placeholder variables in the documents. The placeholder variables are linked to localized objects through a reference file having entries populated with localized objects that are extracted from a dynamic link library based on a language selected by a user. Before loading each markup language document into a browser, the placeholder variables are replaced with their associated localized objects during a pre-rendering operation. When the markup language documents are rendered by the browser, display pages are produced containing localized objects in the language selected by the user. The present invention also provides for localizing composite graphic objects, which include a global portion, such as a trademark logo, and a localized portion, such as a phrase, through the use of cascading style sheets, thereby enabling the phrase to be rendered in a specified language.