> use exactly the same >> node names whatever the language, so that the
    > same link can be used, and >> when the manual is compiled to multifile
    > HTML, you have the same file >> tree whatever the language.  > Seems

    Currently the usual practice is that a translated document is just
    another document with some -xx ending in the base name (where xx refers
    to the language, e.g. fr for French).��

True.

    In my opinion an alternative method would be that translated document
    should rather bare exactly the same name but just be in a language
    specific directory named xx, with some fall backs to another language

No question that that is a well-known alternative approach.

    * Translated node name: true node name. Some description
    @node true node name
    and the viewer is supposed to show only "Translated node name".

As Gavin says, that is not correct.  Both parts of the node name are
intended to be shown.  The existing use of this feature is to make short
menu item abbreviations, e.g., for the sake of completion or just ease
of reading.  For example, in the Texinfo manual, the HTML Cross
References section has a @menu like this:

@menu
* Link Basics:       HTML Xref Link Basics.
* Node Expansion:    HTML Xref Node Name Expansion.
..


Whatever such a hypothetical texinfo-light needs to do, fine.  We should
think about that separately.  It need not affect what Texinfo does.
Seems like two very different cases to me.  Let's not try to shoehorn
existing Texinfo features into things that are far outside their intent
and practice.

A discussion of such a texinfo-light (not a name I would advocate,
either) should presumably take place on emacs-devel, not in a debian bug
for Texinfo.

k