podebug allows you to rewrite the output text in a number of ways.
The source text is surrounded by xxx as follows
msgid "English" msgstr "xxxEnglishxxx"
This is useful when you want to identify which text is localisable. There might be text in your application which you cannot localise this will allow you to quickly identify that text.
The source text is copied to the target
msgid "English" msgstr "English"
In this way you can create translations that contain only the source text. Useful if you are preparing a roundtrip test or want to start an English derived translation such as British English. It produces the same results as msgen but with the advantage that you can add debug markers.
This simply empties your current translations
msgid "English" msgstr ""
When you have a set of translation files but no template this allows you to essentially convert a PO into a POT file. This mimics the --empty functionality of msghack