Storing strings outside the ruby code.

I assume you're wanting to do this as part of some i18n or l10n effort. But even if not, the following should apply. I don't have a really good straight answer for you, but you should check out the discussion on this page:

http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/Internationalization

As well as this forum: http://www.ruby-forum.com/forum/20