Hi,
1. With a translation override, and thus the changing on the text, you can add images, links, or even modules (with an extension like modules anywhere). So really, it's up to you what you want there. Now improving that display by default is a good idea. We'll look at that on our end.
2. Well, it's more complex than that. plural works differently in different languages, and even in english, just trimming at the end of the words for 's' is not a really good solution. For example, If you search "bus" and the search trims to "bu", you'll end up with many results with the "bu" text in it which will have nothing to do with buses. So if you want to handle "did you mean" kind of search like google does on its search, it's a lot more complex with complex algorithms, and requires a lot of resources compare to simply searching for what the user entered exactly. I'm afraid you won't see a solution for that any time soon.