[R] gettext weirdness

[Florent Angly]

Hi,

I am trying to use the gettext() function to translate some text. I have 
never used this function before, so, it's entirely possible that I am 
doing something wrong. The issue that I am encountering is that 
gettext() properly translates some text, but not some other.

Natural language was compiled in my R (installed from the Debian 
repositories):
$ R
R version 2.15.1 (2012-06-22) -- "Roasted Marshmallows"
[...]
   Natural language support but running in an English locale
[...]
 > q()

Here is some text that has some translation in the file ./po/fr.po:
     #: src/main/errors.c:290
     msgid "invalid option \"warning.expression\""
     msgstr "option incorrecte \"warning.expression\""
     [...]
     #: src/main/errors.c:582
     msgid "Error in "
     msgstr "Erreur dans "

Start R in French and see if I can get something translated to French:
$ LANG=fr_FR.UTF8  R
 > stop('This is an error')
Erreur : This is an error

 > bindtextdomain("R") # does not seem necessary, but just to be safe...
[1] "/usr/share/R/share/locale"

 > gettext("Error in ", domain="R")
[1] "Error in "

 > "invalid option \"warning.expression\"" -> msg; gettext(msg, domain="R")
[1] "option incorrecte \"warning.expression\""


So, the stop() function successfully translates. I can also manually 
translate some entries, but why can does it not work for gettext("Error 
in ", domain="R")?
Any idea?
Thanks

Florent