One idea is to use the __DATA__ block to store texts

Why go through the process of having to convert text to a hash at runtime, everytime; and load all languages for every run.

• Why not just store them in a .pl. (One per language if you can know what language you are going to use in advance) file:

  text.EN

  (
  "...", # 0
  "...", # 1
  ...
  );
  [download]

  And then you can do:

  my $lang = determineLang();
  my @text = do "$lang.pl";
  
  ...
  
  print $text[ 27 ];
  [download]

• You can save a little more time by not even parsing the list, by using Storable, but that has a bad press with some people.

  use Storable [thaw];
  
  ...
  
  my $lang = determineLang();
  my $text = thaw( "$lang.sto" );
  ...
  
  print $text->[ 27 ];
  [download]

  You would use a separate small app to build and write the binary storable files.