Hibernate version: we must use 2.1.6, no option here

Our application is using a data base with multiple data being translated into several languages.

There is a large number of tables involving translations. All of them have the following structure:

table 1 : concept ( id, non_translatable fields)
table 2 : concept_translation ( concept_id, locale, translatable_fields)

entries in those tables are frequently inserted and modified

Looking for recommended approaches to this problem I found this post:

http://blog.hibernate.org/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi/2004/06/23#i18n

with comments here:

http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=27171

For the reasons explained before (more than 30 tables being translated, with some of them having more than 1000 registers, frequently modified), I think the solution is not appropriate. Please let me know if I am wrong.

I have mapped the translations as Map properties, indexed by the locale, and that works in some situations. But in other cases, I can not load enough information in one HQL due to the limitations of having only one collection eagerly loaded.

Currently ,I am planning to use Hibernate for almost all the application and SQL for some of the queries involving several translation tables. But, for obvious reasons, I prefer to find a way to use Hibernate for all the queries.

Are there any more references addressing this subject?

Thank you