diff --git a/_build_js.sh b/_build_js.sh
index fea3428..32ff64a 100755
--- a/_build_js.sh
+++ b/_build_js.sh
@@ -2,8 +2,6 @@
 source "_build_common.sh"
 
 mkdir -p out/js
-echo 'Generating lang.js...'
-php ./dump_js_lang.php $@
 
 echo 'Processing JS...'
 npm run webpack
diff --git a/lang/dump_selected.php b/lang/dump_selected.php
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..411d6f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/lang/dump_selected.php
@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
+#! /usr/bin/env php
+<?php
+
+require_once __DIR__ . '/../base.php';
+
+$selected = array_slice($argv, 1);
+
+$output = [];
+
+foreach ($selected as $key) {
+  $output[$key] = tr($key);
+}
+
+fwrite(STDOUT, json_encode($output, JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE));
diff --git a/lang/lang-loader.js b/lang/lang-loader.js
index 7ab8c3b..4561768 100644
--- a/lang/lang-loader.js
+++ b/lang/lang-loader.js
@@ -1,151 +1,26 @@
 /*
- * This is a Webpack loader.
- * Loads language PHP files by parsing the PHP syntax and returning a Javascript
- * Object. This is because using JSON instead of PHP would not allow multiline
- * strings, and CSON is unsupported by PHP, and because splitting the language
- * files into PHP and JSON seems unwieldy.
+ * This is a Webpack loader that loads the language data by running
+ * dump_selected.php.
  */
 
+const { spawnSync } = require('child_process')
+const path = require('path')
 const selectedKeys = require('./keys')
 
-const tokenizeRest = function (tokens, tokenize, ...args) {
-  let i = 0
-
-  while (i < tokens.length) {
-    if (typeof tokens[i] === 'string') {
-      tokens.splice(i, 1, ...tokenize(tokens[i], ...args))
-    }
-    i++
-  }
-
-  return tokens
-}
-
-const tokenizers = {
-  simpleType (code, regex, type, matchIndex = 1) {
-    let tokens = []
-    let match
-
-    while ((match = code.match(regex))) {
-      let before = code.substr(0, match.index)
-      code = code.substr(match.index + match[0].length)
-
-      if (before) tokens.push(before)
-      tokens.push({
-        type,
-        match,
-        content: match[matchIndex]
-      })
-    }
-
-    if (code) tokens.push(code)
-
-    return tokens
-  }
-}
-
-const unescapeString = function (token) {
-  if (token.match[1] === "'") {
-    // single-quoted string only has \\ and \'
-    return token.content.replace(/\\[\\']/g, match => match[1])
-  } else {
-    // double-quoted string
-    // \n -> 0x0A
-    // \r -> 0x0D
-    // \t -> 0x09
-    // \v -> 0x0B
-    // \e -> 0x1B
-    // \f -> 0x0C
-    // \\ -> \
-    // \$ -> $
-    // \" -> "
-    // \[0-7]{1,3} -> char
-    // \x[\da-f]{1,2} -> char
-    // \u{[\da-f]+} -> char
-    let content = token.content
-    content = content.replace(/\\[nrtvef\\$"]/g, match => match[1])
-    content = content.replace(/\\[0-7]{1,3}/g, match => {
-      return String.fromCodePoint(parseInt(match.substr(1), 8) % 0xFF)
-    })
-    content = content.replace(/\\x[\da-f]{1,2}/ig, match => {
-      return String.fromCodePoint(parseInt(match.substr(1), 16) % 0xFF)
-    })
-    content = content.replace(/\\u{[\da-f]+}/ig, match => {
-      return String.fromCodePoint(parseInt(match.substr(1), 16))
-    })
-    return content
-  }
-}
-
 module.exports = function (source) {
-  let originalSource = source
-
-  // remove PHP header
-  source = source.replace(/^\s*<\?(?:php)?\s*/, '')
-
-  // remove return statement
-  source = source.replace(/^return\s*/, '')
-
-  // remove trailing semicolon
-  source = source.replace(/;\s*$/, '')
-
-  // strings
-  let tokens = tokenizeRest([source], tokenizers.simpleType, /(['"])((?:\\.|[^\\\1])*?)\1/, 'string', 2)
-
-  // comments
-  tokenizeRest(tokens, tokenizers.simpleType, /\/\/(.*)/, 'comment')
-
-  // map delimiters
-  tokenizeRest(tokens, tokenizers.simpleType, /([[\]])/, 'map')
-
-  // arrows
-  tokenizeRest(tokens, tokenizers.simpleType, /(=>)/, 'arrow')
-
-  // commas
-  tokenizeRest(tokens, tokenizers.simpleType, /(,)/, 'comma')
-
-  // whitespace
-  tokenizeRest(tokens, tokenizers.simpleType, /(\s+)/, 'whitespace')
-
-  // remove whitespace tokens and comments
-  tokens = tokens.filter(token => !(['whitespace', 'comment'].includes(token.type)))
-
-  // split tokens into an array of items, separated by commas
-  let currentItem = []
-  let items = [currentItem]
-
-  for (let token of tokens) {
-    let { type } = token
-
-    if (type === 'map') continue
-    if (type === 'comma') items.push(currentItem = [])
-    else currentItem.push(token)
-  }
-
-  // remove null items
-  items = items.filter(item => item.length)
-
-  // assume that every item will contain [string, arrow, string] and create
-  // an object
-  let data = {}
-
-  for (let item of items) {
-    let key = item[0]
-    let value = item[2]
-
-    if (!key || !value) {
-      console.error('Item has no key or value!', item)
-      continue
-    }
-
-    data[unescapeString(key)] = unescapeString(value)
-  }
+  let child = spawnSync(path.resolve(__dirname, 'dump_selected.php'), selectedKeys, {
+    timeout: 10000
+  })
 
-  let result = {}
+  let data
+  try {
+    data = JSON.parse(child.stdout.toString().trim())
+  } catch (err) {
+    console.error(`\x1b[31;1m[lang-loader] Failed to parse JSON:`)
+    console.error(child.stdout.toString().trim())
+    console.error(`\x1b[m`)
 
-  // put selected keys in result
-  for (let key of selectedKeys) {
-    result[key] = data[key]
+    if (err) throw err
   }
 
   // adapted from webpack/loader-utils
@@ -168,11 +43,11 @@ module.exports = function (source) {
     file: currentRequest,
     sourceRoot: '',
     sources: [remainingRequest],
-    sourcesContent: [originalSource],
+    sourcesContent: [source],
     names: [],
     mappings: 'AAAA;AAAA'
   }
 
   this.callback(null, `/* Generated language file */
-module.exports=${JSON.stringify(result)}`, map)
+module.exports=${JSON.stringify(data)}`, map)
 }
diff --git a/webpack.config.js b/webpack.config.js
index 94b9866..e70fcb1 100644
--- a/webpack.config.js
+++ b/webpack.config.js
@@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ plugins.push(new webpack.optimize.UglifyJsPlugin({
 }))
 
 // replace "locale-data" with path to locale data
-let locale = process.env.LOCALE || 'en'
+let locale = process.env.ESP_LANG || 'en'
 plugins.push(new webpack.NormalModuleReplacementPlugin(
   /^locale-data$/,
   path.resolve(`lang/${locale}.php`)