Currently .desktop translations are kept in-file rather than using
gettext .po/.mo files as every other translation does.  This adds
extra complexity to application's translation infrastucture.  Although
KDE SVN has its own ways of coverting to and back from .po files third
party apps don't.  It also means distributions can't easily ship
updated translations.  Both Ubuntu and openSUSE patch KDE and Gnome to
make them use translations from gettext instead of .desktop files.
Should we consider changing the way these translations are done?  I
believe the glib maintainers are looking at this too.

Jonathan