Modules usually have a '.pm' extention, although there is this whole debate about identifying files by their extention being a bad thing. Modules and packages look the same if you squint enough, so there are probably no practical differences between your code and a 'proper module' as it is.

Something like this is what I'm talking about:

package My::Language::Dutch;
use strict;

my %language = ( 
    blue => 'blauw', 
    red  => 'rood', 
);

sub get_word 
{
    my $class = shift;
    my $word  = shift || return;
    return $language{$word};
}

1;  # IMPORTANT -- modules have to return a true value at the end
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You put that somewhere in your @INC under a My/Languages directory, so that perl knows where to find it, and then use it like this:

use My::Language::Dutch;

my $blue_dutch = My::Language::Dutch->get_word( 'blue' );
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If you need to dynamically use a language at runtime, you'll have to fall back to require and some class name tricks:

my $language = 'Dutch';
require "My/Language/$language.pm";

my $class = "My::Language::$language";
my $blue = $class->get_word( 'blue' );
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