ok folks I figured out the plural forms thing.

in gettext you can specify how many plural forms exist in your language, in arabic we have three (مفرد، مثنى، جمع) you need to specify that in the po file headers.

if you don't the file is considered broken.

if you're using kbabel go to settings -> configure kbabel

and make Number of singluar/plural forms equal 3

then in the GNU plural form header add

nplurals=3; plural=n==1 ? 0 : n==2 ? 1 : 2;

if you're not using kbabel you can edit the header manualy, open the po file in a text editor, find the plural form line and change it to look like this

"Plural-Forms: nplurals=3; plural=n==1 ? 0 : n==2 ? 1 : 2;\n"

cheers, Alaa

http://www.manalaa.net