Multi Language Item Descriptions

I have a table of some 8000 items with a verbose (memo field) description in English. I need to add French and Spanish Item descriptions to some of the items ( but not all of them) and call up the correct description when processing orders and/or invoices. I want the system to automatically supply the english text if the French/Spanish does not exist.

I could go for the easy option of adding a language field to the table, and then simply replicating all 8000 items for french and Spanish and then replace the English text. This would work but probably affect performance.

What I really want is to add foreign descriptions to the table ( as a new item record) as and when they are required, and look for, say, a French Item Description, and if one is there. then use it, else find the fallback English descriptions. Trouble is, I have had no success trying to craft the tables/queries to do this.

I've played with group-by queries to deliver a language code, but run into difficulties with grouping memo fields. Any help or pointers would be much appreciated - I've searched the forum for "multi lingual" and "multi language" with no success, but my apologies if I'm asking an old question.

I'm posting this in tables and queries as I am not sure which forum !!

Thanks for your attention