How to i18n better?

Hi everyone, I'm new here and it's my first message. We are making a blog platform (http://oire.org/) which is provided in several languages (currently they are Russian, Ukrainian, and English). Now the i18n process is made as follows: we set a cookie on the site and depending on it we select the language to display the site in. We have three (currently) interface files: rus.lng, ukr.lng, and enu.lng (for English US). the format is the following: define ("MSG379", "Welcome!"); etc. I know that PHP does support somehow exporting the strings into a .pod file. Maybe it would be better to do that? If so, how can I do it? Could you suggest me maybe a better solution than we currently have? Thanks a lot! -- With best regards from Ukraine, Andre http://oire.org/ - The Fantasy blogs of Oire Skype: Francophile; Wlm&MSN: arthaelon @ yandex.ru; Jabber: arthaelon @ jabber.org Twitter: http://twitter.com/m_elensule