Help for htacces or routing

I have this scenario:

One controller called Brands with relative class Brands.
Inside this controller the following functions:

index() - This is showing the list of all brands inside my db
show($slug) - This is showing the detail of the brand clicked and all list of the products related with that brand.
detail($slug) - This is showing the detail of one product belonging to the previous product list

When I call index, as normal, I have a url like that:

- http://localhost/brands

When I click on a brand of this list, I have an url like that:

- http://localhost/brands/show/apple

When I click on a product of this list, I have an url like that:

- http://localhost/brands/detail/macbook-13-retina

I would like to have previous urls in this form:

- http://localhost/brands
- http://localhost/brands/apple
- http://localhost/brands/apple/macbook-13-retina

Now, I've read a lot of tutorials and I've read how to routing library works, but
I can't understand if routes can help me more than a htaccess.
Also, the cms I'm building can be installed with a different language than English, so I can have
for example:

- http://localhost/brands but as well
- http://localhost/marcas or
- http://localhost/marche

How can I use routing or htaccess for to get the above changes?

Can someone help me? Thank you very much in advance...

Giorgio