As I said, I like the idea of using components for small blocks of text: Headers, footers, menu items etc. I don't like the idea of doing that for large chunks of text (e.g. paragraphs in a lengthy article). And the problem is -- my webpage is composed mostly of larger chunks of text... I could use a component to retrieve the article, but then I end up with n component files for n languages again.

With the help of your links, I found Locale::Maketext, which looks very interesting (even more than gettext). Class::Phrasebook might also be useful, but is less versatile. I also found two interesting articles: Localizing your perl programs and Localizing open source software. Especially the first one demonstrates the dilemma of internationalization rather well (and we haven't even talked about localization yet!). I'm glad I only have to handle two languages (maybe three later).