Localizing Strings

Hi,

http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki:multilingual_content describes how to make
complete pages available in multiple languages. If you write a plugin and
want to make it multi-lingual, you rather need a list of translated strings
like the one DokuWiki uses itself
(http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki:multilanguage). How can I use such a
translation within my own plugin? Extending the central translation files
might be a bad idea, because multiple plug ins might conflict with each
other. Programming my own translation mechanism and thus replicate the same
function within a program multiple times is probably bad coding style too.
Any better ideas?

Christian Barmala