diff -Nur gnome-doc-utils-0.20.10-orig/xml2po/xml2po/__init__.py gnome-doc-utils-0.20.10/xml2po/xml2po/__init__.py
--- gnome-doc-utils-0.20.10-orig/xml2po/xml2po/__init__.py	2020-05-01 19:15:02.937514100 +0200
+++ gnome-doc-utils-0.20.10/xml2po/xml2po/__init__.py	2020-05-01 19:31:34.676207600 +0200
@@ -259,7 +259,7 @@
                     if not self.expand_entities:
                         result += '&' + child.name + ';'
                     else:
-                        result += child.content.decode('utf-8')
+                        result += child.content
                 else:
                     result += self.myAttributeSerialize(child)
                 child = child.next
@@ -338,7 +338,7 @@
                 pass
 
             if not newnode:
-                print("""Error while parsing translation as XML:\n"%s"\n""" % (text.encode('utf-8')), file=sys.stderr)
+                print("""Error while parsing translation as XML:\n"%s"\n""" % (text), file=sys.stderr)
                 return
 
             newelem = newnode.getRootElement()
@@ -423,7 +423,7 @@
         outtxt = self.normalizeString(attr.content)
         if self.app.operation == 'merge':
             translation = self.app.getTranslation(outtxt)
-            self.replaceAttributeContentsWithText(attr, translation.encode('utf-8'))
+            self.replaceAttributeContentsWithText(attr, translation)
         else:
             self.app.msg.outputMessage(outtxt, node.lineNo(),  "", spacepreserve=False,
                               tag = node.name + ":" + attr.name)
@@ -464,7 +464,7 @@
             norm_outtxt = self.normalizeString(outtxt, self.app.isSpacePreserveNode(node))
             translation = self.app.getTranslation(norm_outtxt)
         else:
-            translation = outtxt.decode('utf-8')
+            translation = outtxt
 
         starttag = self.startTagForNode(node)
         endtag = self.endTagForNode(node)
@@ -504,7 +504,7 @@
             # !!! This is not very nice thing to do, but I don't know if
             #     raising an exception is any better
             return False
-        return tmpstr.find('EXTERNAL_GENERAL_PARSED_ENTITY') != -1
+        return tmpstr.find(b'EXTERNAL_GENERAL_PARSED_ENTITY') != -1
 
     def doSerialize(self, node):
         """Serializes a node and its children, emitting PO messages along the way.
@@ -552,11 +552,11 @@
         self.current_mode = self.load_mode(mode)()
         # Prepare output
         if operation == 'update':
-            self.out = tempfile.TemporaryFile()
+            self.out = tempfile.TemporaryFile("w+", encoding="utf-8")
         elif output == '-':
             self.out = sys.stdout
         else:
-            self.out = file(output, 'w')
+            self.out = open(output, 'w', encoding="utf-8")
 
     def load_mode(self, modename):
         try: