Interesting question! The problem may not be with the modules, but with gettext itself. What editor are you using? And, is it setup for .po files? For example, in Emacs, some config changes should be made. I would also check to see that libintl is present and properly linked. There's a multititude of tweaks that can be done to gettext. See:
I used kbabel for the .po file. msgfmt liked the file, msgunfmt gives me what I'd expect back from the .mo file.
I've been through the documentation you linked a few times with no luck yet. Thanks for the reply.