I don't control the Q2A releases in any way. I also won't take the responsibility of notifying anyone about when something is merged. Particularly, if there is a tool already designed for that. If you want to know the status of the pull request you can just monitor it (subscribe to the PR's notifications). Also note that it is a pull request and it doesn't mean it will be merged. It might be rejected.
I created the PR to be merged in the 1.8 branch. This is because there is an intention to make all 1.7.x translations compatible regardless of the value of x. So that gives you an idea of the WHEN.
Regarding the temporary fix, it's just right there in the pull request. As you want a core hack, doing so is just that, a core hack. Check the "Files changed" section of the pull request and apply those changes to your installation. You can change the text right there in file qa-lang-profile.php. That way, if this is fixed in 1.8, replacing the file will apply the release fix and remove this temporary fix.