Multi-language variations - How do you localize navigation?

Question

We are creating the variation structure for a multilingual 2010 site. We would like our navigation to be based upon the site/subsite structure of the site collection. The problem is that the out-of-the-box SharePoint navigation creates links from the site name, which happens to be localized to the source site. We are ok with the URL's having the source site's name in it, we just want the navigation to use localized texts.

I know that a work-around is to turn off site-based navigation on the target site and do it manually, but this will become cumbersome as we anticipate having a few hundred subsites.

An example of what we would like our navigation to look like:

EN-US (English Source Site)

Link in Navigation | URL

Home | www.consoso.com/en-us/Pages/default.aspx  
Work | www.consoso.com/en-us/Work/Pages/default.aspx  

de-DE (German target site)

Link in Navigation | URL

Heim | www.consoso.com/de-de/Pages/default.aspx  
Arbeit | www.consoso.com/de-de/Work/Pages/default.aspx 

Answer 1

If you create the variation of each page from the Publishing Toolbar, it gives you the option to specify a Title and URL for the variation.

A bit long winded if you already have a full hierarchy of pages and sites created, but it is an option.