[translations] Empty Strings

[Martin Stadler]

So empty strings in a .po file override already translated strings if  
I import them...

I know the current system of contrib translation is far from good and  
people are working on it (d6, SoC...). Anyways, here's my scenario:

I started translating some contrib modules I use (into German). Of  
course I want my work to be commited to the drupal CVS. I read the  
translations handbook and got used to some gettext tools, merging  
etc. What I did was extracting a fresh .pot file, merging it with the  
core de.po into the module's de.po and started translating the still  
empty strings. Sometimes it's too much work and it seems to be enough  
to only translate the strings that will be visible to the end-user  
leaving the rest of the strings empty. After importing and testing I  
filed issues in the respective projects attaching my de.po files.

Now I found out that empty translation strings will override already  
translated strings in the override mode of the import feature of  
drupal. As I merged the core .po file with my .pot this is only a  
problem if the string doesn't exist in core but does in another  
contrib module with an existing translation which is already  
imported. I cannot merge all module's translations with the one I'm  
about to create. So it may happen that I override an existing  
translation of a contrib module with an empty string of another's  
module's translation. To me it makes sense to keep empty string in my  
translation file as I or someone else will propably continue to work  
on that file. But as these empty strings are soon part of the  
official stable modules they can override other's translations too.  
Of course I could import them without overriding existing strings but  
sometimes I want to update my translation...

Is there any solution to this problem? A tool to delete the empty  
strings as a workaround? What kind of .po files should I commit in  
the future?

Sorry for the long text and repetitions...

Cheers,
Standart