I recall discussing this.. I am with you in that it really does need more discussion, and in turn perhaps a few more elegant solutions..

At the moment the "multiple language files" method is the best IMO, but even with that there's the potential to spend many(as mentioned) many hours just updating those.

If it could actually be done(don't think so ATM, or even for quite a while), I think the use of automated translation(with caching of course) would be the only way to reduce time spend making updates to multi language sites. This would ultimately only require 1 edit of each page/post, etc..

The current problem with that method is that "perfect direct translation" simply doesn't exist..