Multilingual WP

I am using WordPress as a CMS, relying heavily on custom post types and custom fields, and I am currently trying to find an efficient yet very simple way to create / display content in two languages. Before posting here, I did my share of research and read on WordPress proposed solutions, and tested both the qTranslate and WPML plugins. However, none of them really pleases me so I’m trying to come up with a custom solution.

I have this semi-solution in mind at the moment, but I’m missing a couple of puzzle pieces to implement it, or to confirm that it is a valid solution. Here is what I have in mind.

• One post contains both languages. No cross-referencing of different posts in different languages.
• Use custom fields to manage every piece of data. Since I use WP as a CMS, I usually rely very heavily on custom fields for data entry and most often disable the default content editor. Let’s say I need to create a description field, I would create two, one for each language, and name them something like description_en and description_fr.
• Modify the permalink structure so that it includes a language parameter somewhere, most preferably at the start. http://www.mywebsite.com/en/posttype/post and http://www.mywebsite.com/fr/posttype/post

What I am hoping this will achieve is each page will have its own URL, thus making it a valid solution SEO wise, while having to enter all the data on one page will make it easy to use for the clients.

What I liked about qTranslate is that it managed two things for me : the duplication of the post title field and the insertion of the language inside the permalink. I tested a hybrid qTranslate / custom fields solution and it worked great (however, I’m looking to get rid of qTranslate). I would print the custom fields by appending bloginfo(‘language’) after their names.

Now, what I would like to do is implement the insertion of the language (and it’s linkage to WP’s language var or something equally practical) inside the permalink and the duplication of the post title field myself.

If someone could give me pointers on this, it would be greatly appreciated. Also, if this seems like a fishy solution to some, please say it. Thanks in advance.