Gnome translators have long been translating documentation via bare XML files. This sucks bigtime, and everybody knows it: no compendia, no fuzzy matching, no clear separation of translatable text and markup.
KDE has a solution for this, but it is based on XML parser built-in Qt. Yuck, a dependency of tens of megabytes just to be able to translate documentation in an efficient manner.
Fortunately, this has long been a recognized problem for translators in Gnome, and there were several attempts to solve it. That includes doc-i18n-tool included in intltool, but not build by default. It was developed in C using libxml2 parser. That means that it makes use of widespread and great parser which Gnome is based around (libxml2), but it also means that it uses obscure language such as C for text processing, which makes it basically a nightmare to create a working prototype.
So, I've took a different approach: I used libxml2 via Python, and that made it possible to create a tiny program which does the job suitably for Gnome Summary. I have also performed some tests with Bug Buddy manual, so I think it is at least sometimes possible to use this for general DocBook documents.
Grab it at kvota.net/hacks/xml2po, where you can find program and example summary, README on how to produce a translation out of it, and Serbian translation (btw, anyone volunteers to do Serbian translations in the future? they will be featured on developer.gnome.org and gnomedesktop.org, so it's a good way to get noticed :).
There are whole lot of quirks and missing features (check the TODO as well), so there's lot to do to make it really usable. In any case, I'd recommend it to Serbian documentation translators for now, so it would be easier to track document changes.
Whoever wants to track development may try my anon CVS:
cvs -z4 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.kvota.net:/cvs/i18n co xml2po
intltool bug: by yours truly
Let me not forget: I had the (not so) rare privilege of finally introducing a bug in some core Gnome component. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I've introduced a bug in intltool which makes it bork for many modules and programs (and not "rarely" as I first though). So, step right on, and get yourself a new intltool 0.29 release, which features a bug made just for you. I was nice enough to even provide a fix for that, so you might want to check out latest intltool from CVS, or look at the simple patch bug #131885 (close to the bottom, inside a message, not attached).
I've been hacking sporadically on intltool, so Kenneth added me to new intltool list hosted at freedesktop.org.
So, if your modules don't build anymore, close your eyes, and think of me :)