Localize Panels and Views menu titles

This issue is a bit odd to explain, and it might belong in the Panels queue. I'm going to bring it up in #drupal-views again today.

Using i18nmenu, we expect to be able to translate menu items and have those translated titles rendered appropriately. However, it seems that Page Manager (CTools, Panels 3) disables this feature by passing a blank menu title to t(). Panels later changes the page title manually with drupal_set_title().

To try to make Panels correctly display translated titles for menu items it controls, I wrote the following code. And I wonder if this is the right approach, of if there is something in the i18n suite that I just missed or failed to understand.

Essentially, I had to rewrite theme_menu_item_link() in order to ensure that translations were applied. I also use hook_ctools_render_alter() to affect the proper page title.

Note: this does not handle the translation of content on the Panel page, which is a separate issue.

/**
 * Implement hook_theme_registry_alter().
 *
 * Make menu translations work correctly for i18n, Panels and Views.
 */
function custom_theme_registry_alter(&$theme_registry) {
  if (module_exists('i18nmenu')) {
    $path = drupal_get_path('module', 'custom');
    $theme_registry['menu_item_link']['function'] = 'custom_menu_item_link';
  }
}

/**
 * Alter the way that menu links are handled.
 *
 * This function ensures that menu items are translated correctly. Two big
 * notes: 
 *
 *   1) Only works on menu items!
 *   2) Does not work on items in the 'Navigation' menu!
 *
 * This requires the i18nmenu module.
 */
function custom_menu_item_link($link) {
  // Checking every link may be resource intensive, but let's try it!
  $link['title'] = custom_alter_link_title($link['title'], $link['mlid']);
  // For Panels and Views, wrap the above in this IF statement.
  //  if (!empty($link['page_callback']) && $link['page_callback'] == 'page_manager_page_execute') {
  // }
  if (empty($link['localized_options'])) {
    $link['localized_options'] = array();
  }
  return l($link['title'], $link['href'], $link['localized_options']);
}

/**
 * Given a menu title, try to translate it.
 *
 * @param $title
 *   The menu link title.
 * @param $mlid
 *   The menu link ID (see the {menu_links} table.
 * @return
 *   The properly translated text.
 */
function custom_alter_link_title($title, $mlid) {
  static $lang, $titles;
  if (!isset($lang)) {
    $lang = $GLOBALS['language']->language;
  }
  if (isset($titles[$mlid])) {
    return $titles[$mlid];
  }
  $trans = db_decode_blob(db_result(db_query("SELECT lt.translation FROM {locales_target} lt INNER JOIN {i18n_strings} i ON lt.lid = i.lid WHERE i.type = 'item' AND i.objectid = %d AND lt.language = '%s'", $mlid, $lang)));
  if (!empty($trans)) {
    $titles[$mlid] = $trans;
  }
  else {
    $titles[$mlid] = $title;
  }
  return $titles[$mlid];
}

/**
 * Try to translate a Panels page title.
 *
 * drupal_alter('ctools_render', $info, $page, $args, $contexts, $task, $subtask);
 */
function custom_ctools_render_alter(&$info, $page, $args, $contexts, $task, $subtask) {
  $item = menu_get_item();
  if (isset($info['title'])) {
    $mlid = db_result(db_query("SELECT mlid FROM {menu_links} WHERE link_path = '%s' AND menu_name <> 'navigation'", $item['path']));
    $info['title'] = custom_alter_link_title($info['title'], $mlid);
  }
}

Feedback welcome. If you want to move the issue, that's fine, too. If this should be a patch to some module, I can whip one up.