I might be shunned from the relational community, for making the mere point.

But if there is technology in place, which permits the storage/extraction of different language versions for a bit of text within a single field, and where we won't have to create these extra tables.

Is there any harm in encoding the data in to a single field, until such technology becomes available?

And could one way of doing this be with a tightly constrained XML field?

Sam

<Text>

<Translation locale="en-US" isDefault="True">G'day</Translation>

<Translation locale="en-GB">Good day to you</Translation>

<Translation locale="fr-FR">Bonjour</Translation>

</Text>