I have table A with Code and other fields and table B with Code, description and language. I want to associate these two table to show the Code and other fields from table A with description in user langugae from table B to the user.
Now, the primary key in table B is composite, but not all the fields of B is availble in A (language is missing). What do I do?
If I try to create a surrogate key in table B (using an identifier) then the primary key won't be composite, but I cannot use the same identifier in table A. Because if I put the identifier say 123 for combination "1, Some_Desc, EN" in the table A, then the data becomes language specific whereas I should store the data non-language specific to be able to display in user languge!!!
I am stuck with this, please help.

Well there are two approaches I have used to handle this in Hibernate 2.1.x:
1) Use a custom UserType to manage the association. The UserType can be aware of the current language/locale and select the appropriate row. Here the FK between the two would just need to be the CODE.
2) Map this using a <map/>. Again the FK between the two would be the CODE; the map would be keyed by language/locale and its value would be the appropriate description for that language/locale key.