diff --git a/.Rbuildignore b/.Rbuildignore
index 6e6b8b4016..a6996ac555 100644
--- a/.Rbuildignore
+++ b/.Rbuildignore
@@ -46,3 +46,6 @@
 ^lib$
 ^library$
 ^devwd$
+
+# only the inst/po compressed files are needed, not raw .pot/.po
+^po$