If you're as clueless as I am, please note the following:
1. Although most comments list setlocal() in the code, that's not actually required for translations - read the docs under "string functions" for details (also, the official gettext() examples don't include it);
2. hace_x's example is really cool, except you need to know that all "n"'s at the end of his strings should have a backslash before - they're actually EOL characters, but they somehow got messed up and I needed two hours to find that out...