Custom SSH app in unix console that changes text strings

We use an application that runs in a CentOS 4.5 SSH session. It's basically text base, using some ascii caracters to display lines and boxes. The application can run directly on the PC console (in text mode) or via an SSH session. The application is in English. I need to have some users use it in a different language. My idea is to create an telnet or SSH program in Unix that will SSH back to the localhost. As the text is comming through to be displayed in English, replace it with the equivalent in French. The program should do this via a lookup of translations in a local file (or database). The look up can be something as simple as a text file: For example in the file you would have: [English displayed text], [Output language] To not distort the screens, the output text length would be constrained to use the same lenght as the English displayed text. Will need to think of something to deal with various lenghs of text as some text is a single word, sometimes it's a string of several words. Ideally the program can also output a list of all the words or word combinations that it could not find, which would facilitate the translation process. Most likely the job will consist of starting with some existing ssh client source and modifing it. This is a very urgent project so it needs to be done asap, within a week if possible.