please see http://drupal.org/node/105986#comment-172684
this would solve the following problems:
1) needing to provide access control for translations separate from the contrib module code.
2) allowing translations to be tagged, released and packaged independently of the corresponding contrib code. so, when a popular module (e.g. views, events, etc) finally ships its 5.x-1.0 version, you can decide when to release the XY-views-5.x-1.0 translation (to language 'XY') whenever it's ready. right now, there's little or no coordination between module developers and translators, so the .po files that get released along with the contrib are almost always going to be out of date and incomplete.
3) most contrib users don't care about all the translations for a given module. however, people trying to use another language interface on their site might be interested to know all the contribs that have been translated to a that language. currently, there's no way to search for this.
my proposal linked above addresses all 3.
please comment there:
http://drupal.org/project/comments/add/105986
thanks, -derek (dww)