Yes, you can generate them manually. That is what I've been doing until now.
Using Poedit or "msgfmt -c -o de.mo de.po" and putting them into locale/de/LC_MESSAGES/vdrift.mo
It would of course be more optimal to integrate it into scons (
http://www.scons.org/doc/2.3.0/HTML/scon...x3534.html ).
data/locale/genpot.py can be used to generate the pot file. It is a remainder from the previous custom localization system (which I am almost missing now, as it has been stupid simple, no messing with gettext or scons).
I think the same could be done with xgettext + custom keyword specifications, haven't bothered to look it up yet.