Internationalization of dotLRN (replacing all hard-coded text in ADP templates or TCL files with a <trn> tag, a #...# notation) should make it trivial to create a dotWRK (en-US) or a dotLRN (jp-JP) translation... so as you are thinking about the different ways to map a class/term/semester/etc. to your organization it might be a good investment to store this information in a table (or something equivalent) so you can easily create a "dotLRN/dotWRK language pack" in the future.
Which reminds me: can someone give me some background on the "Pretty Name" feature on the community-edit pages in dotLRN. What was the idea behind this?