Originally reported downstream: http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=344793 In my settings middle-button mouse-click on desktop shows virtual workspaces names and application list. On my home PC, localized in ru_RU.UTF8 correctly localized workspace name is displayed for the first one. Names of the rest workspaces are not localized. On my work PC, localized in ru_RU.KOI8-R, all workspaces names are localized correctly. Right mouse-button click in the header of the window leads to move-window on another workspace menu. The issue is in that: On my home PC, localized in ru_RU.UTF8 correctly localized workspace name is not displayed at all. For the first one is displayed only number, for the rest one unlocalized workspace names. On my work PC (currently unavailable), localized in ru_RU.KOI8-R, the first workspace name is displayed correctly, for the rest ones the workspaces names are not displayed at all, only numbers.
Most checks were on XFce-4.6.2. Later prompted with current development version (4.8_pre in Gentoo portage).
These are two different things. The desktop menu uses "Workspace <n>" as a separator, this is indeed from the code and gets translated to the locale. The desktop menu does not show the desktop names. The window menu list the number of desktop followed by the desktop names between brackets. So if your desktop names is "Workspace 1" for example, this string is not localized (it's a string set by the user, it's not from the code and therefore not translated to the current locale). If anything, I would tend to think that an RFE for the desktop would be to show the desktop names as well (and not a hard coded string). Please note that desktop names is part of the EMWH, it's not something we made up. I see no bug here, just normal behavior. If you want the desktop names to be in your language, just set the string to your liking in the workspace settings manager.
One more thing, if the desktop names are not set, the default are set to the localized value by default.