Dweeberkitty has packaged gettext 0.16.1 for VL 5.8, and you can grab it from the testing repo:
Package:
http://vectorlinux.osuosl.org/veclinux-5.8/testing/base/gettext-0.16.1-i386-4vl58.tlzgettext: gettext (GNU gettext)
gettext:
gettext: This is the GNU gettext package. It is interesting for authors or
gettext: maintainers of other packages or programs which they want to see
gettext: internationalized. As one step the handling of messages in different
gettext: languages should be implemented. For this task GNU gettext provides
gettext: the needed tools and library functions.
gettext:
gettext: http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/
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