I don't really agree with this point of view that Ubercart should not be fixed to support internationalization.
If we stick to Drupal core, everything should work or be marked "buggy" until someone fixes it.

The catalog block is an example where simple fixes could be applied with little to no side effect.
I think we should split a series of small patches and push them to the main Drupal.org website and wait for commit.

I would like to discuss a first issue, which is the catalog block:
http://drupal.org/node/951760