diff --git a/tools/generate_table_po.php b/tools/generate_table_po.php
new file mode 100755
index 0000000000..29f9c9fcfc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tools/generate_table_po.php
@@ -0,0 +1,116 @@
+#!/usr/bin/php
+<?php declare(strict_types=1);
+
+/**
+ * This script generates a .pot file for a table for the data
+ * from a database. This is intended to allow the data to be extracted
+ * in a format that can be handed off to translators but can not
+ * be maintained by LORIS as it's project specific.
+ *
+ * Database table .po files go in project/locale/ rather than
+ * the LORIS locale/.
+ *
+ * This script checks if the template exists and refuses to overwrite
+ * it, but otherwise does little validation.
+ *
+ * Since there isn't a good way to determine which columns are translateable,
+ * it must be called as:
+ *   generate_table_po.php --columns=column1,column2,etc tablename
+ *
+ * to generate the po template for tablename.
+ *
+ * Duplicates are eliminated before writing the file.
+ *
+ * @category Tools
+ * @package  Loris
+ * @author   Dave MacFarlane <david.macfarlane2@mcgill.ca>
+ * @license  http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.txt GPLv3
+ * @link     https://www.github.com/aces/Loris/
+ */
+require_once __DIR__ . "/../vendor/autoload.php";
+require_once "generic_includes.php";
+
+/**
+ * Prints usage info to stderr and exists
+ *
+ * @return void
+ */
+function usage()
+{
+    global $argv;
+    fprintf(STDERR, "usage: %s --columns=column1,column2 tablename\n", $argv[0]);
+    exit(1);
+}
+
+$lastidx = 0;
+$opts    = getopt("", [ "columns::" ], $lastidx);
+$columns = $opts['columns'];
+if (empty($opts['columns'])) {
+    usage();
+}
+
+if ($lastidx !== $argc-1) {
+    usage();
+}
+$table = $argv[$lastidx];
+
+$outputfile = __DIR__ . "/../project/locale/$table.pot";
+
+if (file_exists($outputfile)) {
+    fprintf(
+        STDERR,
+        "Will not overwrite existing template file %s. '
+	.'Backup and remove the file if you want to overwrite it.",
+        realpath($outputfile)
+    );
+    exit(2);
+}
+
+// This is not particularly robust or secure, but this script is only run by
+// trusted users on the backend.
+$rows = $DB->pselect("SELECT $columns from $table", []);
+
+$values = [];
+foreach ($rows as $row) {
+    foreach ($row as $val) {
+        $values[$val] = '';
+    }
+}
+
+$values = array_keys($values);
+
+if (count($values) == 0) {
+    fprintf(STDERR, "No translateable values found\n");
+    exit(3);
+}
+
+
+$fd = fopen($outputfile, "w");
+
+fwrite(
+    $fd,
+    <<<EOF
+msgid ""
+msgstr ""
+
+"Project-Id-Version: LORIS 28\\n"
+"Report-Msgid-Bugs-To: https://github.com/aces/Loris/issues\\n"
+"POT-Creation-Date: 2025-04-08 14:37-0400\\n"
+"PO-Revision-Date: YEAR-MO-DA HO:MI+ZONE\\n"
+"Last-Translator: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>\\n"
+"Language-Team: LANGUAGE <LL@li.org>\\n"
+"Language: \\n"
+"MIME-Version: 1.0\\n"
+"Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\\n"
+"Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\\n"
+
+
+EOF
+);
+
+foreach ($values as $val) {
+    if (!empty($val)) {
+        fprintf($fd, "msgid \"%s\"\n", $val);
+        fprintf($fd, "msgstr \"\"\n\n");
+    }
+}