diff --git a/CHANGES b/CHANGES
index ee550517a..3fce72ab7 100644
--- a/CHANGES
+++ b/CHANGES
@@ -109,6 +109,8 @@ Bugs fixed
 
 * #1316: Remove hard-coded ``font-face`` resources from epub theme.
 
+* #1329: Fix traceback with empty translation msgstr in .po files.
+
 Documentation
 -------------
 
diff --git a/sphinx/transforms.py b/sphinx/transforms.py
index 338d47392..14e2c97fd 100644
--- a/sphinx/transforms.py
+++ b/sphinx/transforms.py
@@ -196,7 +196,10 @@ class Locale(Transform):
             patch = new_document(source, settings)
             CustomLocaleReporter(node.source, node.line).set_reporter(patch)
             parser.parse(msgstr, patch)
-            patch = patch[0]
+            try:
+                patch = patch[0]
+            except IndexError:  # empty node
+                pass
             # XXX doctest and other block markup
             if not isinstance(patch, nodes.paragraph):
                 continue # skip for now
@@ -299,7 +302,10 @@ class Locale(Transform):
             patch = new_document(source, settings)
             CustomLocaleReporter(node.source, node.line).set_reporter(patch)
             parser.parse(msgstr, patch)
-            patch = patch[0]
+            try:
+                patch = patch[0]
+            except IndexError:  # empty node
+                pass
             # XXX doctest and other block markup
             if not isinstance(patch, nodes.paragraph):
                 continue # skip for now