I (1) downloaded buddypress.pot; (2) made the changes to it using a text editor; (3) copied buddypress.pot to buddypress-en_US.po; (4) used poedit to create buddypress-en_US.mo; (5) copied all 3 files to /wp-content/languages/plugins/; (6) tested Register; (7) messages unchanged.
So I (1) copied all 3 files to /wp-content/plugins/buddypress/bp-languages/; (2) tested Register; (3) messages unchanged.