Django i18n: is there a gettext alternative?

I'm looking for a way to translate my Django project. Built in mechanism provided with Django is great, but has several weak points which made me go looking for an alternative.

Project owner must be able to edit every translation including English (original translation). With gettext it is possible to edit translations with tools like Pootle, but the original strings stay hardcoded inside file sources or templates. There is no way that product owner can change them.

Possible solution is to make gettext translate some unique identifiers, and just translate them to all languages including English, like this:

_('form_sumbit_button')

But this makes tools like pootle almost impossible to use for translators.

Question: are there any tools for Django project translation that could fit my needs?