Hello,
Yes, I have tried layers and no, it is not a satisfactory solution. First of all, not all viewable formats recognise the Pro/E layers. For example, HPGL. Secondly, for the viewable formats that can "read" the layers which are present in a Pro/E drawing, the information contained in those layers is wrong. Meaning that language layers in the Pro/E drawing work well (the notes are corresponding correctly to the layers, you can hide/unhide), but when you activate/deactivate those layers in ProductView, the notes are not associated in exactly the same way. For example, there are notes that will not disappear from the viewable and will overlap each other.
I have tried different configurations of the "Worker" too, it does not work, the content of the Pro/E layers will not propagate correctly into the ProductView layers. The layers are there, the name is the same, but its content is wrong.
Therefore my conclussion was that we cannot use layers to achieve the goal of Multilanguage.