Add context to those translations. They meaning is different: sometimes we want to talk about an action "Empty the trash", and sometimes we want to talk about a state "The trash is empty". In spanish, for example, we make that difference.

I also wrote down this example on:
<a href="http://techbase.kde.org/index.php?title=Development/Tutorials/Localization/i18n#Standard_Context_For_Common_Phrases">http://techbase.kde.org/index.php?title=
Development/Tutorials/Localization/i18n#Standard_Context_For_Common_Phrases</a>