I don't think the cost of dynamic lookup will be very high, at least in news.arc there isn't that much text. I intend to use a function that looks into a table:
(prn (i18n 117))
I think numbers over pseudo-text-symbols will fit with arc's keep-it-brief style.
I don't like the numeric setup - I find it makes the code hard to read. Most of the other i18n libs I've seen use English in the code and then a mapping between English and other languages in a separate file. I think that approach makes more sense. When I'm skimming code, I'd rather read (i18n "Add Comment") than (i18n 143).
