Is it possible to mark up alternative translations effectively in HTML/XML?

Further thoughts in the Extracting appropriate language text from HTML data thread highlighted the fact different sections of a document may have different translations available (Thanks john_oshea). The following example markup works fine if you only request English but either French or Italian messes up badly.

<locale lang="en">English Part 1</locale>
<locale lang="fr">French Part 1</locale>
<locale lang="en">English Part 2</locale>
<locale lang="it">Italian Part 2</locale>

[download]
Extracting English returned :- 
<locale lang="en">English Part 1</locale>
<locale lang="en">English Part 2</locale>

[download]
However extracting French returned :- 
<locale lang="fr">French Part 1</locale>

[download]
And extracting Italian returned :- 
<locale lang="it">Italian Part 2</locale>

[download]

Both of these are very wrong. Are there any standard ways of solving this problem?

A logical extention of my markup might be to wrap each section in a wrapper tag.

<locale>
  <locale lang="en">English Part 1</locale>
  <locale lang="fr">French Part 1</locale>
</locale>

<locale>
  <locale lang="en">English Part 2</locale>
  <locale lang="it">Italian Part 2</locale>
</locale>

[download]

Alternatively giving each locale block an id would have a similar effect.

<locale lang="en" id="part1">English Part 1</locale>
<locale lang="fr" id="part1">French Part 1</locale>

<locale lang="en" id="part2">English Part 2</locale>
<locale lang="it" id="part2">Italian Part 2</locale>

[download]
Both of these would work for graphic designers and people who are used to editing HTML but what would be the most intuative solution for a normal person.

Thanks
UnderMine

Edited to mark Off Topic and fix links. UnderMine

2006-06-03 Retitled by g0n, as per Monastery guidelines
Original title: 'OT Marking up alternatives'

2006-06-03 Retitled by g0n, as per Monastery guidelines
Original title: 'Marking up alternatives'

In reply to (OT) Marking up alternatives by UnderMine

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