The reported translation issue has been fixed upstream in commit 83b6e9bc7bc2f1b0d4306a84e49ba122537814eb:
https://github.com/varietywalls/variety/commit/83b6e9bc7bc2f1b0d4306a84e49ba122537814eb The change makes Variety use the default system gettext locale directory when the package-local variety/locale directory is absent. This matches the Debian package layout described above. Please include the upstream fix in the Debian package.
