<p>I have an internal web app with an image at the top of the page, currently containing some english text with drop shadows. I now need to provide localized versions of this page for various languages. My main choices are:</p>

<p><UL>
<LI>Have a different graphic per supported language, containing the localized text.</LI>
<LI>Use CSS to position localized text over a plain image, with a <A HREF="http://www.workingwith.me.uk/articles/css/cross-browser-drop-shadows" rel="nofollow noreferrer">complex CSS technique</A> to get drop shadows in most current browsers.</LI>
</UL></p>

<p>Are there other options? This is for an educational environment, I don't get to control the browser used by the students.</p>

<p>I did try both removing the drop shadows from the graphic, and also moving the text into in a header in the HTML, but neither was appealing. People said it looked like a cheap knockoff of the current page, which wounds my pride.</p>

Personally I'm a big fan of CSS techniques for visual effects like this. The big benefit is that you are offloading the processing of the effect to the client side, saving you bandwith and content creation time (custom text images for each locale is a big order!), and making the page download faster for the user.
The only reason to avoid it is if you absolutely MUST have the drop shadows on very old (IE5) browsers with next to no CSS support.
Edit: Just thought of something - I a few cases like this where I need a specific font or some exact text effect I've used PHP to render the text, with effects, to an image and cache it server side. That way you avoid the content creation process and gain wider browser support in exchange for bandwidth and server CPU time. It's your call if the tradeoff is acceptable.