Concepts
For interface components like menus, I like them to be dynamic. I don't like to have to recode the structure for every language though, so I have two files: a structural data file and the translation file.
This makes for manageable maintenance, but is processor intensive at run time. Now I'm thinking about a style sheet to merge the two together in a manner similar to caching or compiling.
I'd like the system to be able to use either the non-compiled, interpreted versions, or the optimized structures, but I'm not sure its possible.
New Method
My new method is thanks to some research I conducted with [http://www.nodows.com/ NODOWS]. What I plan to do now is use a span tag with the text key as a class attribute, and then include the default text within the span. An identity transform can then be applied to either simply remove the span tag and be done with it, or to replace the text within as well with a new language.