Index: share/mk/doc.commands.mk
===================================================================
--- share/mk/doc.commands.mk
+++ share/mk/doc.commands.mk
@@ -70,8 +70,13 @@
 HTML2TXT?=	${PREFIX}/bin/links
 HTML2TXTOPTS?=	-dump ${HTML2TXTFLAGS}
 
+ITSTOOL?=	${PREFIX}/bin/itstool
+
 JING?=		${PREFIX}/bin/jing
 
+MSGFMT?=	${PREFIX}/bin/msgfmt
+MSGMERGE?=	${PREFIX}/bin/msgmerge
+
 XMLLINT?=	${PREFIX}/bin/xmllint
 XSLTPROC?=	${PREFIX}/bin/xsltproc
 
Index: share/mk/doc.docbook.mk
===================================================================
--- share/mk/doc.docbook.mk
+++ share/mk/doc.docbook.mk
@@ -269,6 +269,37 @@
 	${SED} 's|@@URL_RELPREFIX@@|http://www.FreeBSD.org|g' < ${.TARGET} > ${DOC}.parsed.print.xml
 	${SED} -i '' -e 's|@@URL_RELPREFIX@@|../../../..|g' ${.TARGET}
 
+# translation -------------------------------------------------------
+
+# path to the English version to be translated
+ENGDOCDIR=	${PWD:S/${LANGCODE}/en_US.ISO8859-1/}
+# detect the document type from the path, and make it singular for use in the DTD
+# just removing the trailing "s" is less safe than distinct replacements
+SRCDOCTYPE=	${PWD:H:T:S/articles/article/:S/books/book/}
+# DTD for inclusion in translated documents
+FREEBSDDTD=	<!DOCTYPE ${SRCDOCTYPE} PUBLIC \"-//FreeBSD//DTD DocBook XML V5.0-Based Extension//EN\" \"http://www.FreeBSD.org/XML/share/xml/freebsd50.dtd\">
+
+# create a po file for translations
+po ${DOC}.po: ${XML_INCLUDES}
+	${MAKE} -C ${ENGDOCDIR} ${DOC}.parsed.xml
+	${ITSTOOL} -k -o ${DOC}.po.tmp ${ENGDOCDIR}/${DOC}.parsed.xml
+	( if [ -f "${DOC}.po" ]; then \
+		echo "${DOC}.po exists, merging" ; \
+		${MSGMERGE} -o ${DOC}.po.new ${DOC}.po ${DOC}.po.tmp ; \
+		${MV} ${DOC}.po.new ${DOC}.po ; \
+		${RM} ${DOC}.po.tmp ; \
+	  else \
+	   	${MV} ${DOC}.po.tmp ${DOC}.po ; \
+	  fi )
+
+# create the translated ${DOC}.xml from the .po file.
+tran: ${DOC}.po
+	# abort if there is an existing ${DOC}.xml?
+	${MSGFMT} -o ${DOC}.mo ${DOC}.po
+	${ITSTOOL} -l ${LANGCODE:S/_.*//} -k -m ${DOC}.mo -o ${DOC}.xml ${ENGDOCDIR}/${DOC}.parsed.xml
+	# put the FreeBSD DTD back in after line 1
+	${SED} -i'' -e "1a \\${.newline}${FREEBSDDTD}${.newline}" ${DOC}.xml
+
 # XHTML -------------------------------------------------------------
 
 index.html: ${DOC}.parsed.xml ${LOCAL_IMAGES_LIB} ${LOCAL_IMAGES_PNG} \