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 I18nItem getLabel();

N2B would instance these - via injection, the impl would know what locale to use and delegate to MessagesManager (or its replacement) - we'd have a default null-pattern type of implementation (which returns the key or an empty string, or sthg else - this could even be swapped depending on dev mode etc). Would this impact performance/memory usage ? 

Suggestions

Differentiate between in-code-translations, vs in-config-translations. Translations in-configuration will require very little code change, but will require some work on update tasks and bootstrap files. IntelliJ (Eclipse too, probably) provides analysis tools to find out where i18n strings have been hardcoded. Attached a sample report executed on a couple of modules: i18-analysis.zip (main, ui, activation, cache, imaging, workflow). Note that the html-exported report is not very useable, but the in-app report is much more practical: Screen Shot 2013-07-31 at 14.21.14.png

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