I 'm stick to use a legacy database whose schema I cannot modify.

First, there is a Message table that uses a compound key (idMessage, idLang) . It centralizes I18n messages


Most other tables reference the Message Key and have an idMessage column.

I would like to have a one-to-many mapping from each entity to the Message entity. Unfornutalely, there seems to be no goog way to achieve this.

Any help would be greatly appreciated...

Guess the Filtering Data feature of Hibernate 3 is something for you. Check the docs Chapter 17. Filtering data.

HTH
Ernst