multilingual nodes architecture issue Is it possible that node translations aren't new nodes? For example if I translate /node/1 I get /node/2 and this is problematic in some cases (comments are not shared between #1 and #2, and entity references are not reused).

Detailed walkthrough:

I'm using locale, translation, variable and i18n. I've got 2 languages configured: EN, FR. I have content types News and Event. Both have Multilingual support: "Enabled, with translations". The News has fields:


title
body
reference to a Event (implemented with entityreference)


I create 2 node instances:


/node/1 (#1) Event (EN)
/node/2 (#2) News (EN) with reference back to #1


I edit #1 and add a translation (FR) and #3 is created. I then translate #2 and #4 is created. The problem is that I have to respecify that the reference from #4 is #3 and not #1. If I use the "Synchronize translations" feature of the content type the workflow is a bit better but still not exactly what I want since on the FR front end when viewing #4 the reference to #1 will be displayed in EN and not FR.

Is there any way to have translations not creating new nodes but instead just translating some fields only?

Also, is the module i18n the "defacto standard" for implementing multilingual sites in Drual 7? Or is there something better out there?
Did you try Entity Translation ? 

I find it very much easier and efficient than i18n (which is needed for some other parts of the site anyway).

There you get exactly what you're looking for : translations stored in one node only.