Otherwise xgettext will fail when it stumbles upon non-ASCII characters in update-alternatives.pl, even if those are only used in comments.
@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ subdir = po
top_builddir = ..
# These options get passed to xgettext.
-XGETTEXT_OPTIONS = --keyword=_ --keyword=N_ --keyword=_g
+XGETTEXT_OPTIONS = --keyword=_ --keyword=N_ --keyword=_g --from-code=UTF-8
# This is the copyright holder that gets inserted into the header of the
# $(DOMAIN).pot file. Set this to the copyright holder of the surrounding