diff --git a/po4a/update-po b/po4a/update-po
index ef72f836..710b0ed8 100755
--- a/po4a/update-po
+++ b/po4a/update-po
@@ -84,6 +84,12 @@ po4a --force --verbose \
 # This way they won't get included in distribution tarballs.
 rm -f -- *.po.authors
 
+# Non-ASCII characters in table data can cause groff to merge UTF-8 escapes
+# with internal table markup like [tbl], creating invalid character names.
+# Insert \& (a dummy character) after non-ASCII characters in table data
+# rows to prevent this.
+perl -i -CSD -pe 's/([^\x00-\x7F])/\1\\&/g if /^\.TS/ .. /^\.TE/' man/*/*.1
+
 # Add the customized POT header which contains the SPDX license
 # identifier and spells out the license name instead of saying
 # "the same license as the XZ Utils package".