[smoe]

In most places I worked that used translation systems, all languages where translations including the default one. Within code using message keys like "thing.title", "thing.add_action", "thing.on_save_error", etc or something like that.

I really like this approach because it makes the code and especially templates much more readable. You usually don't care about the verbose form of the text that should be displayed and those type of keys give you just enough information to understand what it is.

Problem is, it makes it harder to outsource the translations, and well, as it is known, naming things is hard.