For those who didn't already notice, I went ahead and branched the 1.12 release line yesterday, starting from trunk as of a couple days previous (before the very latest batch of schema changes and other controversial last-minute fun things :)
Vital functionality fixes and localization updates that need to go into the 1.12 release should be committed on the REL1_12 branch as well as onto trunk; I'll be doing a 1.12.0 release next week.
If you're not sure if your fix is vital enough, suggest it to me and I'll decide whether to apply it or not. :)
Note that the current plan is to allow localization updates fairly liberally on the latest release branch, with snapshots available for download so people wanting localization updates don't have to wait for the next bug-fix point release.
-- brion