OK, I see you point, but I respectfully disagree :) Maybe I am too conservative, but I believe the original LJ approach to localization was the good one, and perhaps the only good one. You are NOT going to get other linguistic group(s) to join the platform, unless you give them an option to customize the environment to their liking, including of course language interface. This capability is far more important than business-quality UI, even if most of foreign-language-speaking users will initially opt for English version.
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This is Web 2.0 we are talking about, aren't we?