BuddyPress.org

this is one of those things that should be simple, and ought to be simple, but for the life of me I can’t recall how to do it.

Right now the code prints a phrase on the screen, assembled with:
printf( __( "What's new in %s, %s?", 'buddypress' ), bp_get_group_name(), bp_get_user_firstname() );

I want to assign that to a string so it can be placed elsewhere easily. Li’l help?