Modify Magento front-end menu in custom magento template

We have a customized magento template which needs to have the menu items for my account, login/logout, wishlist, compare etc. be put into a drop-down menu. Detailed requirements: - The drop-down menu shall indicate whether the user is currently logged in or not. When logged in, the menu title should therefore include the user's name. For example "My account" when logged out, "XYZ's account" when logged in. - The implementation needs to support multi-language using the magento translation functionality (including inline translation). - The implementation needs to respect the existing CSS styles and color schemes of our template - The implementation should use the existing magento menu snippets rather than re-inventing the wheel - The implementation should not modify any of the core magento code, but use the template engine to accomplish the task Looking forward to your proposals.