language versus html markup?

What is the problem of using code igniter library for translations?
http://www.codeigniter.com/userguide3/li...guage.html

I still don't get what a translation has to do with HTML. If you need 3 translated strings for a HTML tag then you need them... what other option do you have? Unless you want the guy that is translating stuff to write HTML directly which is strange... but then again it's a string as well