I get different variants of the error below on several occasions. I can use most of the functionality of MovableType (posting, editing,....), but when I try to trackback, this is what I get:
"maketext doesn't know how to say: _USAGE_PING_LIST as needed at /usr/local/apache/vhosts/frederic/htdocs/movableType/lib/MT.pm line 1096"

when I click on the Comments button, I get this one: "maketext doesn't know how to say: _USAGE_COMMENTS_LIST as needed at /usr/local/apache/vhosts/frederic/htdocs/movableType/lib/MT.pm line 1096"

The very bizarre thing about it is that I can't trace these errors in the error log of my webserver. Please help.

Just a guess here: Did you upgrade to MT 3.x from MT 2.x? If so, it appears to me that lib/MT/L10N/en_us.pm did not get upgraded. The two phrases you cite ( _USAGE_PING_LIST and _USAGE_COMMENTS_LIST) are in the MT 3.x en_us.pm but not in the MT 2.x en_us.pm.

I'd suggest re-uploading lib/MT/L10N/en_us.pm from your MT 3.x distribution to your server, making sure that the uploaded copy overwrites the existing one on the server.

David,

it's true that I suffer these errors since I'm on 3.0, but the solution doesn't seem to work

I did a little digging around and believe I found your weblog here. Do you have another language pack installed and are you using it in your author profile?

No, a little check learned me that I have no other language packs installed and that I am logged in as the original administrator

I was able to replicate the error by replacing lib/MT/L10N/en_us.pm in my MT 3.11 install with the MT 2.661 version of that file. There may be another way that this error occurs, but it appears to me that the en_us.pm file not being upgraded is most likely the problem.

I'd suggest downloading [mt.cgi dir]/lib/MT/L10N/en_us.pm from your server and see if it really is the upgraded one or not. The first line of MT 2.661 en_us.pm:

The first line of MT 3.11 en_us.pm:

Also, in the MT 3.11 en_us.pm:

_USAGE_COMMENTS_LIST appears at line 56

_USAGE_PING_LIST appears at line 60

The above phrases do not appear at all in the MT 2.661 en_us.pm.

The only other thing I can think of is that the path you're uploading en_us.pm to is not correct. en_us.pm should be uploaded to [mt.cgi dir]/lib/MT/L10N/en_us.pm. Case matters here ("MT" should not be "mt"). "L10N" is "letter L - number 1 - number 0 - letter N".

If you're having difficulty getting your FTP program to overwrite the file, you could try deleting en_us.pm first on the server, then uploading the new en_us.pm to replace it.

That's about all I know to suggest.

I fixed it, thanks to Dave. Though the solution was partly correct: en_us.pm in lib/MT/L10N/ was the correct (3.11) version.
Some browsing however taught me that there I had a second copy of that file in /extlib/MT/L10N/
and there the file was not upgraded. So I overwrote that one as well, and now everything works smoothly. Any idea why I have this file in the extended lib? (I've been using MovableType since version 1.2 or sth if memory serves right, and I've always installed the upgrades in the way I was supposed to I think).
Many thanks in the meantime!

At this point, I don't know that it really matters why it's there, but the fact that it is there did cause you problems.

I installed the full version of MT 3.0D when it came out. Within that distribution, there is an extlib/MT/L10N directory in it, but that directory has no files in it. I'd suggest that you delete extlib/MT/L10N/en_us.pm and any other files present in that directory.

MT searched the extlib directory for MT/L10N/en_us.pm and found the old version there first, so it never bothered to look for the correct file in the lib directory. Unless you delete the files in extlib/MT/L10N, you'll most likely have this same problem then next time you upgrade MT.