In Wordpress, CiviCRM blocks the execution of the Edit function in the Wordpress media library with error "call to undefined function ts()"

CiviCRM integration in Wordpress attemps (for some reason) to add some buttons in the Wordpress Media Manager when you click on a media item to edit it, by calling the function civicrm_add_form_button_html().

This function fails with the message "Fatal error: call to undefined function ts() in <path to civiCRM>/civicrm.php on line 649".

There is a forum post from last August (http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php?topic=29796.0) where the respondent suggests hand-editing this function to return if CiviCRM is not initialized. This perhaps is a workaround-I have not tried it-but it doesn't sound like a proper fix.