Trying to use phptemplate override to rename "buddies"

Hi - I found http://drupal.org/node/190580 where it is suggested to use either locale and a po file, or to use an override in the template.php file for your theme. I haven't tried to use the translation method but when I try to override the buddy_api_translation() function in my template.php file, I get nasty errors. I'm very new to coding and from what I gather, in order to override a module or core function, it needs to be in a theme_function() pattern rather than just function().

Could anyone tell me firstly if I'm wrong, and if not, would it be possible to request that more buddylist2 functions are made into theme overridable functions - specifically the one that lets me change my "buddies" into "connections" etc?

I'd rather not involve the locale module just for this small edit (performance reasons) and at the same time, I'd rather not hack the module code itself either.