Alternative/new strings system

[stef]

Could you point out the benefits of having a worldwide played online multiplayer game with players who don't know five words of a common language? Why would anyone want to translate the game in the first place? Given the already small playerbase, does it make sense, to additionally establish language barriers?

PS: that piece of code certainly does not translate anything. How would "reading strings from a file" aid i18n better than gettext does? Gettext at least keeps the source code itself readable...