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Migrating an existing translation to a PO file format is basically editing the header as described in the previous section, and populating each of the messages by copying the already translated text and markup from the existing translation in HTML format in the relevant message.
Typically, you will visit po/foo.lang.po (in PO mode) and
foo.lang.html (in HTML mode) in another buffer. Then you
can copy a paragraph or an element from the latter and yank it in the
relevant message in the former. Be extra careful, since this is the
time to check precisely that the translation corresponds to the
original. Further changes will be reflected, but if your “initial”
PO file is not a 100% match, that would not necessarily mean that it
is an improvement. Since it is very easy to do this kind of check,
because the relevant msgid and msgstr appear one above
the other in the same buffer (or the similar concept in other PO
editors), please do perform this initial sanity check even if
you are confident that the translation you have been yanking strings
from is a completely up-to-date translation.
In GNUN 0.6, a semi-automatic way to make an initial PO file was also added. Since almost all translations have migrated to PO files, that facility was removed after GNUN 1.5. If you need it, please use GNUN 1.5.