<p>I'm porting a Java library to C#. I'm using Visual Studio 2008, so I don't have the discontinued Microsoft Java Language Conversion Assistant program (JLCA).</p>

<p>My approach is to create a new solution with a similar project structure to the Java library, and to then copy the java code into a c# file and convert it to valid c# line-by-line. Considering that I find Java easy to read, the subtle differences in the two languages have surprised me.</p>

<p>Some things are easy to port (namespaces, inheritance etc.) but some things have been unexpectedly different, such as visibility of private members in nested classes, overriding virtual methods and the behaviour of built-in types. I don't fully understand these things and I'm sure there are lots of other differences I haven't seen yet.</p>

<p>I've got a long way to go on this project. What rules-of-thumb I can apply during this conversion to manage the language differences correctly?</p>

Your doing it in the only sane way you can...the biggest help will be this document from Dare Obasanjo that lists the differences between the two languages:
http://www.25hoursaday.com/CsharpVsJava.html
BTW, change all getter and setter methods into properties...No need to have the C# library function just the same as the java library unless you are going for perfect interface compatibility.