translations - use existing "system" ones? see what's avilable?

[Amy C <mathematical coffee gmail com>]

Hi all,

I'm trying to add translations to my extension. I've been following
the instructions on the GNOME page for translation extensions[0] so
far.

However, the strings I want translated are 'Minimize', 'Maximize',
'Close', etc -- the very same strings that are in the popup menu when
you right-click a window's system title bar.

These surely have translations already somewhere on the system, being
such common strings.

Is there some way I can make my extension use these pre-existing
translations, wherever they are? Or somehow copy the .po files? (I'm
very new to the whole gettext/translations things - still making sense
of it). Since the probability is high that translations exist for
these strings already I want to avoid having to re-translate them.

On a related note, is there some way I can test that my translations
worked in say looking glass? Or to see what translated strings are
availabled for a particular gettext domain?

Can I do something like _("Minimize", "de") to see what "Minimize"
looks like when translated to German? Or gettext.listDomains() to see
a list of domains and perhaps what translatable strings are available
in each? (Sorry if this is entirely not how translations work, as I
said, I'm clueless at the moment).

cheers!
[0]: https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Extensions/FAQ/CreatingExtensions