Before one could just run "make" and after that you could just run ./vdr. However, now LOCDIR is set to $(PREFIX)/share/vdr/locale by default, which causes localisation to not work unless "make install-i18n" (or "make install" which runs it as well) is run, which copies the locale files to LOCDIR.
However, almost exactly the opposite is the case with PLUGINLIBDIR, which by default is ./PLUGINS/lib so that it works inside the source-tree, but it is not so good if installed into /usr/local.
AFAICS this is inconsistent. I think either VDR should work out-of-the-box (without modifying make variables) inside the source tree *or* out of the source tree.
I.e. LOCDIR should be changed to "./locale" or PLUGINLIBDIR should be changed "$(PREFIX)/lib/vdr" or similar.
Or make the i18n.c work with locales being either in LOCDIR or ./locale.
It doesn't really matter to me, but for some other users the current state might be confusing.