There doesn't seem to be a satisfactory answer to encoding of trranslations in properties files. So it looks to me as if we will have to use subclasses of ListResourceBundle. The translations can always be entered as Unicode values. Moreover, for languages suchh as Hebrew and Arabic we will have to enter them "backwards". If we need a new subclass for a new lacality only that subclass will have to be compiled and added to the jar file. With ant this is trivial. John -- John J. Boyer; President, Chief Software Developer Abilitiessoft, Inc. http://www.abilitiessoft.com Madison, Wisconsin USA Developing software for people with disabilities