That's the point. You can't change the format strings to a different word order if the selection of values used to fill the fields is entirely dependent on word order (i.e., how the basic printf syntax works), unless you have a separate line/block of code that executes when the word order of the current locale differs.
I see your point now. Yes, I can see Python 3's syntax facilitate some of that work. I still think you will need branches and/or polymorphisms to do more complex localizations, especially when you need to support east asian languages.
We just have a database of sentences and a translation is a lookup in the DB by some unique identifier. Trying to semi-translate a string just doesn't work very well in the long run (for us).
