Which is faster / more efficient - lots of little MySQL queries or one big PHP array?

Question

I have a PHP/MySQL based web application that has internationalization support by way of a MySQL table called language_strings with the string_id,

Answer 1

My answer is to do something in between. Retrieve all strings for a lang_id that are shorter than a certain length (say, 100 characters). Shorter text strings are more likely to be used in multiple places than longer ones. Cache the entries in a static associative array in get_lang_string(). If an item isn't found, then retrieve it through a query.