foxhound, i18n works in an absolutely different way in Siena rather than pagi18n plugin from Genoa. You don't need to create alternative cat trees, but rather translate the main one.
Here are the essential steps:
Go to Administration / Configuration / Content Internationalization.
Set there root categories where you want to apply i18n, e.g. "articles, news".
Set there locales it will be translated into (the first locale is the main one):
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en|English
nl|Nederlands
de|Deutsch
Go to Administration / Structure / Pages / Structure Internationalization and translate category names and descriptions into each of your (non-main) locales.