1. A method, comprising: receiving a query to an XML document, where the XML document may store a translation for a data element; automatically selecting a query mode for querying the XML document, the query mode being one of, an explicit query mode, and an implicit query mode, the selecting being based, at least in part, on one or more of, a property of a terminal node in an XPath associated with the query, and a property of the query; and querying the XML document using the query and the selected query mode.