I haven't been able to find a satisfactory discussion of this issue -- I'm working on translating several field contents into several languages.

I set up a table, where each record has the English word, and then the translations into German, Spanish, etc.

I can then define a German calc field like so: Substitute(English Field; English Field; GermanRelatedField), where the relationship is drawn between the English Field and the English term in the translation table.

Here's the question: I don't want to get bogged down drawing relationships between every needed field and the translation table. Is there a way that I can work the custom functions to do what I want?

How much text do you have in the source "English Field"? Is it just a word or are we talking whole phrases/sentences?

1-3 word combinations.

Hmm, I'd worry about trying to translate word-for-word to a different language. Different languages tend to construct phrases differently.

I'd suggest storing the whole phrase translations in your table, then the relationship to the translations will be a simple match on the English phrase and chosen language.

It's not to form sentences -- these are really value lists that need translation (column headers on reports, field labels, etc.).

That's what I understood. But you may not want the words "Date" "of" "Last" "Contact" to get translated word-for-word, and end up in an order like "Contact" "of" "Last" "Date".

Yes, and I cannot define common strings that might be found in other words.