LP’s translation software is not just the translation interface, but also the hub for dealing with Ubuntu’s language packs. Replacing it would be a really big project.
If you want to sell such an idea, it’s people at Canonical you need to convince, and to have a chance to make them even listen, I suppose that you’d need to make up a really long list of shortcomings which can’t be easily fixed and which are important enough to give the investment in setting up new software priority.
Some things to keep in mind:
Most translations are done upstream anyway; even more so now when Unity is (almost) not maintained. Translations via LP need to be done for
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the relatively few projects for which LP is upstream wrt translations, and
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Ubuntu specific strings added to upstream packages via patches.
For LP translations you can either use the web interface or download and edit the PO files with any tool you find convenient.
Finally:
What’s TM?
The placeholder issue you mention is probably not too difficult to fix. Maybe a gettext issue similar to LP: #1756547.